


Our Remains

by BlueColoredDreams



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Awkward Crush, BoB Era, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fantasy Bon Jovi, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, Implied TSC Taako/Magnus, Mild Angst, Mutual Pining, Past Relationship(s), Slow Burn, TSC references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-05-20 06:26:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14889359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueColoredDreams/pseuds/BlueColoredDreams
Summary: So maybe ending up with a crush on your boss isn't the smartest thing ever, but there's something about the Director that draws Magnus in, like a dream half-remembered.Besides, since when has he ever been one to hold back?





	1. A Beacon Shined

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Story and chapter titles from Beta Radio's [Our Remains](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=andfeRLHE-0).  
> 

Lucretia has to admit that there were things she had not thought through, and now that she’s faced with her three former friends, each and every thing she’d fumbled with slap her in the face.

She categorizes each one by one:

She had rehearsed her greeting in the mirror, but failed to plan her explanation of the Bureau. She had straightened her posture, put on her best robes, and counted her breaths, but never had she imagined that they would be so utterly _foreign_ to her.

She’d tried to keep up with them through the years, but they had scattered to the wind when she wasn’t looking, leaving heartache in their wake. She’d tried to do research before arranging the entire ordeal, but there was only so much she could gather in time for her plan to work.

What she sees is staggering; what she sees breaks her heart.

Taako, clever Taako, sold himself as an idiot. Merle left his new family, chose a new god, and was wearing sandals with socks, again. And Magnus…

She kept up more with Magnus than the others—he was easier to track, a folk hero and talented carpenter, always in one place with his new love, his wife, until he was gone.

She tried to find him afterwards, like she’d tried to find the others, but it hurt too much. Magnus had disappeared after the bombing of Ravens’ Roost, and she let him slip away, unwilling to face the pain of it.

But now he’s here, they’re all here, in front of her. Her mouth goes dry, her hands shake, her body trembles. She tries to keep it together, to keep her regal act up, but she can’t stop staring.

Magnus, alive, there, in front of her.

He’s broader, heavier looking than he’d been, his jaw more angular, set finally into adulthood. The puppy-faced roundness of his youth is gone, leaving him genial, but rugged looking. She tries to tear her eyes away, to study Taako— thinner, angular, angrier— or Merle, but she’s forever drawn to Magnus like a moon in orbit.

He talks with his hands still, scarred and pitted and still broad; there’s a scar over his eye and it’s so familiar that it squeezes her heart so tight she can barely think.

They are here. She can see them again, every day. Regardless of how they have changed, they are _here_ , with her. And it should be a comfort.

But it does nothing to ease the loneliness that pounds within the chambers of her heart, but she can’t stop herself.

So she lingers, watching, each day praying they come closer to the people she once knew.

* * *

When they first meet the Director, Magnus doesn’t take too much notice of her.

She’s his boss, regal and austere—there’s not too much to notice when he’s got another burning city at his back and a battle on his hands.

She’s not around much, either. He sees her often out of the corner of his eye— watching Killian whip them into shape on the training field, standing at observation windows as Pringles shows them around the labyrinthine corridors of the main complex, eating at the raised table in the cafeteria, occasionally alone, but mostly with who he assumes are other administrative staff.

The others think it’s rather sinister, the way she lingers in the background.

 _Creepy_ , is the exact word Taako uses.

Magnus isn’t sure—for sure there’s _something_ about it that tickles in the back of his mind. It’s not the same feeling as someone giving him the creeps. He gets _that_ feeling in the Fantasy Costco when he goes to get protein shakes and chips that _aren’t_ Pringles so he has a chance of actually being able to eat them.

It’s more akin to the fluttering lurch of the gut when you miss a step going down, or the impulse to double-take at a stranger on the street because, _don’t I know you_?

It’s the same feeling of emerging from the well to ash-laden air and the scent of burning—he’s been there, he’s done that, seen it all. Deja-vu of the oddest sort.

He feels like he’s met her, somewhere, somehow. But then, he felt that way the first job he, Merle, and Taako went on together. There was something about the three of them, together, that felt right, like all the pieces that had been shaken up after the bombing of Raven’s Roost had finally come together.

He’d found his people, he’d decided after that job: This was the feeling of finding his people.

So he accepts the feeling as what it is, takes the strange vertigo of catching sight of the Director watching them read up on the Relics from the second level of the Bureau’s extensive library as a sign that something is bound to fall into place.

He’d found his people in his companions, maybe he’ll find his home in the Bureau.

* * *

He starts cracking jokes about the fried unicorn dick because otherwise, he’s really fucking unsettled. It crawls up his spine and down his arms, raising every hair on his body. Something’s not right, something’s incredibly _wrong_ — there are people littered everywhere from the shockwave of sound, breathing shallowly, limbs haphazard amongst dropped containers of popcorn and funnel cake and strings of tickets.

The enormity of the magical forces these people are fucking with is a strong left hook to the face. They’re out dicking around, unicorn pun intended, and plucking out things that burn cities to glass and can summon giant magical illusions or whatever, and something’s _noticed_.

It turns his stomach. He’s been on this end of an incursion before, he’s been noticed by something bigger and more powerful before. Those screaming whispers and those wide white eyes in the dark are the same as Stephen being delivered, beaten and bloodied from a night at the tavern, Kalen’s sigil pinned on his shirt, the same as broken glass and higher taxes and being followed in the night.

They are known.

“Just- just say no to bad dick,” he laughs, voice thready as he looks around the quad for any signs of movement.

He sees, a few feet away, someone begin to sit up. The hood from their white cloak slips from their head, and Magnus exhales sharply.

The Director.

He trots over to her. She looks around, mouth open as she tries to suck in a breath. He crouches beside her. “What was that?” he demands.

She shakes her head and looks at him, her eyes a bit glassy.

“What in the world was that?” he repeats. “Has that happened before?”

“No, I…” she shakes her head again and blinks rapidly, her breath shaking out of her.

Magnus knows shock when he sees it. He hopes, for a brief second, his pay isn’t going to be affected by this. He reaches out and slaps her as gently as he can.

She immediately swings her arm back and slaps him right back on some unspoken reflex, a sly grin stretching across her lips. “ _Booyah_.”

There’s a stretch of maybe about ten seconds where they just stare at each other in horror. She glances at the pink imprint of her hand she’s surely left on his face, then behind his shoulder at the quad, and then finally, back at him, her face absolutely naked with shock. It slips away to understanding.

Magnus feels like he’s seeing her for the first time. Certainly, he’s never been this close to her before, but he sees something underneath that serious facade that catches at his heart. It hooks in as he listens to her struggle to keep composure, right between his ribs.

She’s dressed up as a white fox, with little whiskers drawn onto her face, nose pained to a little pink button.

One of the whiskers is smudged from where she’d fallen. She’s got on a white headband with ears fixed onto them, and they’re crooked.

He wants to reach out and straighten them.

She makes them wake everyone—probably to buy her time to regain composure, but she’s even more unsettled once they file into her office.

Her hands are tight on her desk, and the costume is gone, strewn in bits across the papers before her: the ears, a pair of furry gloves and a tail that makes Taako snicker when he sees it. Her face paint is gone, the only remains a pink smear on the edge of her nose.

She looks tired. She looks two seconds from falling to pieces.

She has the same tight line of her jaw that Julia did the night before they seized Kalen’s outpost in Ravens’ Roost. Her hands, thin and elegant, are clasped so tightly that they shake as she speaks.

Despite not knowing what exactly caused the disruption during the eclipse, the Director has grasped the enormity of what happened, and is preparing for the worst.

He looks over his shoulder as they leave, and catches the falling movement of her shoulders. Her hands come up and she puts her head into her palms, fingers combing through her cropped hair.

She seems small, in that one stolen glance. His heart tightens and aches— he almost stops, turns around and falls to the urge to apologize.

Apologize for being flippant, for being unable to clearly outline what they saw, what they experienced, for holding his tongue on how deeply unsettling the experience was, what his intuition, honed for battle, is telling him. To apologize for what she seems to know, and he only barely brought himself to saying: something knows they are here, and that something will come for them.

He wants to apologize for not listening to her… when?

 _When_?

Later that night, he thinks of her as he washes his face clear of the cat whiskers and sweat and glitter from the festival.

Specifically, he thinks of her hand on his face and the mischievous way she’d triumphantly said _booyah_. Who says that anymore?

His boss, of course, his deadly deadpan, somber boss, who has a throne room but wears fox ears to a festival.

It was nothing like when Julia knocked him on his ass when he ran his mouth too much about protecting her, and yet it’s everything like it.

He touches the side of his face in the mirror—her hand left no marks (Julia had given him a busted lip for his shit), just a tender place on the inside of his cheek that has already passed.

 _Huh,_ he thinks, feeling his heart do a strange little flip he’s been unaccustomed to for so long.

* * *

He can’t stop thinking about the Director now. She lingers as she always does, on the edges of practice, at the table in the cafeteria; he sees her in the library more, with her gnome assistant, Davenport. He’s as cheerful as ever, carrying maps and scrolls and compasses as she tugs things from shelves. He distributes the pile to the Seekers, and as the pile dwindles, she puts more in their place.

He thinks of her often, the tired and harried way she dismisses them from their meetings about the Seekers’ findings, the disappointed way she reviews Killian and Leon’s reports on their training and education, that brief flicker of a grin as she slipped from disorientation to awareness.

He catches himself thinking of it when he goes to sleep, when he wakes. The restrained laughter and the way she catches herself from going along with their jokes for too long. The unyielding expression contrasted with the way she sunk into herself when she thought they were gone.

He wants to crack her open and hear her heart, unconfined and free like it was in that one second where her hand connected with his face.

It’s one such morning that he heaves himself from his bunk in the wee hours of the morning, and sneaks out to train alone, before the rest of the Bureau wakes and he has to smooth out the rougher edges of himself.

The icosahedron is dark, save for the dojo floor. At first, he thought it was empty, the lights and training equipment left out by some mistake, but then the illusions start running.

The magic flickers to life, and slowly the training dummies start to move. The simulated battles creep him out, more than the robots did in their initiation. So far, Killian’s banned them from using it at all after one disastrous incident with several dummies missing arms, which is more than alright with all three of them.

He keeps by the door, on the off chance that the magic running the training simulation has gone rogue— as things are occasionally wont to do around the base.

(Killian, on one particular occasion had been chased by a large spherical robot with spidery legs and two very long, very sharp, scythes for arms for a good thirty minutes until she managed to kick its legs out from under it, spitting the word ‘ _miller’_ like it was a curse.)

He’s not ashamed to say that he’d book it back to his bunk and pretend to have never been here if it was malfunctioning equipment.

Then, the ringing of metal and an explosion of white light. Magnus throws his arm up over his eyes, tears stinging at the sudden flash. He ducks down, bracing for shrapnel and heat, but it never comes.

When he peers out from behind his arm, the magical barriers are flickering in their blue-white mesh, the edges of the dome-shaped spell marked by a piling of white ash as wind swirls within.

Slowly, the magic reforms from the swirling ash of the previous simulation.

He squints, and then there’s the Director, falling.

No— landing. She hits the training floor with perfectly bent knees and rolls, her staff swinging out as she comes to a crouch, knocking the nearest robot to its back.

She moves swiftly, flowing effortlessly to her full height, body twisting around to swing that white oak staff as a club, knocking the ovoid head of the next robot clean off of its shoulders.

She’s wearing the guard uniform— all blue coat tails and silver buttons and white breeches. He’s never seen her in anything but flowing robes and dresses. His mouth goes dry. She’s wild and feral like this, fighting with all she has, lean and dark and fluid.

The simulation closes in on her.

There’s a clatter, and her staff rolls from the center of the fray. He hears her shout in frustration, and he feels the magic in the sound— a vibration in his gums, a pressure behind his eyes, and most of the hoard falls to their knees in submission.

He’s struck, suddenly, as she kicks at a simulated attacker while another grabs her from behind, by how _tall_ she is. She plants her booted foot into one robot, then tosses the one pinning her over her shoulders with precision.

They flash in the air as she spins and leaps. She ducks into a roll and the magic has the sense to make a robot step on the coat tail of the uniform. She reaches up to her throat and tugs down, popping what must be a hidden zipper in the cloth, and rolls out of the jacket.

Her hands, still clad in white gloves, close around her staff and a dome of opalescent light surrounds her as she rises to her feet. Robots pound and claw against it, their magic programming sending them in a seemingly endless assault against her.

The Director stands in the center of the clawing, pounding mass, clad in the breeches, a light blue bandeau around her chest, and a glowing pendant swinging around her neck. She cuts a single hand through the air in a wide, sharp gesture. The light around her expands, expands, then contracts to a sharp line that, like the first explosion of light, rushes out to the borders of the dojo.

There’s a crack, and then the barrier fails and dims, falling to the ground like shattering glass as every single robot falls, cleft cleanly in two.

Magnus backs into the corridor, unwilling to be caught staring. But he can’t look away: She stands in the center, chest heaving as she lowers her hand and her staff, chin raised defiantly high.

She brings the butt of her staff down on the floor. “Again,” she commands to the empty air. “Next level. Do it now.”

He backs his way down the corridor, keeping his eyes fixed on the Director as the simulation sputters back to life, watching, watching, until he can’t any longer.

His heart thuds in his throat, his hands, his face, his gut. The Director could probably flip him in her sleep, could fight an entire army like that. His mouth goes dry and his stomach does a flip that makes him think of Julia: Julia and the arc of her hammer; Julia, mussed and sweaty from fighting and her hands pushing at him, his pulling at her, and he swallows hard.

He closes his eyes and for the first time, he can see someone other than Julia:

The Director, arms and shoulders bare and skin glistening, the haughty tip of her jaw, her palms, the strength coiled in those slim arms.

He turns, opting to instead go to the dormitory showers rather than his bunk.

* * *

It isn’t long until the others figure out his obsession with the Director—or, rather, his  _crush_  on the Director.

Magnus isn’t a subtle man, and between asking more questions at their meetings and his glances towards her table, now more unoccupied than ever, it’s easy for everyone to put two and two together.

“Isn’t she a little old for you, bud?” Merle says, eyeing the Director. He smirks as they watch her kneel forward to take a scroll from Davenport. As she bends, the neckline of her robes fall open just so, the shadow of skin and cleavage just barely visible.

“Isn’t she a little _young_ for you, old man?” Magnus snaps back, averting his eyes.

“Ha ha, it’s called maturity. Which you’ll never have.”

“Didn’t she see all of your Kenny Chesney ass and was grossed out?”

“Didn’t she see all of your dick and not blink?”

“Dear god! I am trying to eat,” Taako snaps, “And you are killin’ this already shitty food with your horny on moon bull.”

“All I’m sayin’,” Merle says. “Is that if any of us has a chance, it’s—”

“Neither of you have a chance,” Taako cuts in as Magnus makes a disgruntled noise over Merle’s _me_. “You’re too old and grody to consider, and you’re, well. You’re _okay_ to look at but you chew with your mouth open and it’s _disgusting_.”

“You think I’m okay to look at?” Magnus asks, turning to Taako, who rolls his eyes as dramatically as possible. They both ignore Merle.

“I think you’re an idiot who’s going to get fired, _aaac-_ ct- _uuuu_ -ally.”

“Huh. Maybe; we’ll see.”

* * *

“You two go on ahead,” Magnus mutters to Taako and Merle. “I’m gonna, I’m gonna… yeah, well.”

Taako snorts and pushes the tip of his staff to Merle’s shoulders, “C’mon old man, we gotta bounce so Maggie here can romance the boss.”

“I may have a legit, totally genuine reason for, for staying,” Magnus hisses.

“Yeah, your dick,” Merle laughs.

Magnus shushes the both of them as discretely as he can, which isn’t very.

The Director looks up from the papers Killian had passed her. “Is there a problem…?”

Taako and Merle both start to cackle as Magnus slowly turns around, his face hot. He holds up his hands. “I, I… I have a, I want to, uh. I have a question! About performance! Yeah!”

Lucretia blinks and then smiles slyly. “Well, I’m glad to see one of you boys is taking this seriously. Finally.”

Magnus hears Taako and Merle’s laughter double, echoing down the hallway as they meander out.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck.

Killian looks him over, snorts and shakes her head. “I’m heading out ma’am,” she tells the Director. “Get this axe-happy fool dealt with.”

“Well,” the Director says mildly, “I’m not sure _anyone_ can deal with them.”

Killian laughs and claps Magnus on the shoulder as she passes. “Good luck with your _question_ , Magnus.”

Magnus gives her a friendly shove, laughing despite the heat of embarrassment crawling down his neck. “Whatever.”

And then she’s gone, leaving him alone in the conference room with the Director. She smiles goodnaturedly at him.

“Well, Magnus, what was your question?” she asks.

Magnus didn’t actually think he’d get this far; he has no questions. In fact, most of the meeting has already slid from his mind— something about magical artifacts and determining if they should be collected despite not being relics, or relics as magical artifacts. He tries to think of something salient to say.

“Are you extra planar? ‘Cause you’re out of this plane,” he blurts, complete with cheesy finger guns.

The Director’s mouth falls open just slightly, lips parting as she blinks from the head of the conference table. The pen she had tucked behind her ear falls with the movement.

“Is that a no, uh, well, yeah okay, that’s totally a no, um.”

“Magnus, what the _hell_?”

“There, there is no reason to swear at me,” Magnus manages. “It’s a real question, that, that I… have… no, not really, but—”

The Director holds up a hand, cutting him off. “First of all, what possessed you to even _think_ that was appropriate?”

“Uh, inappropriate is just what we do, and—”

“Second of all, that’s a _terrible_ pick up line,” she continues over him, her voice high and wobbly. She drops her hand and pinches her nose in frustration. “It’s just not good! Who told you that was good?!”

“In my defense you run the moon, and I panicked, so—”

“Thir-third of all! I—I don’t even have a third point, Magnus! You are dismissed!”

“From… like. The meeting or? The _moon_?”

Lucretia opens her mouth and then closes it with a huff. “From this _meeting_ , Magnus.”

“Okay good. Because I bet Taako like ten gold that I wouldn’t get fired trying to hit on you and I don’t have ten gold.”

The Director stands from her chair and points to the door. “Goodbye, Magnus!”

“Gotcha, gotcha, nice uh, nice chat.”

He thinks Merle actually pees himself laughing.

* * *

“Oh, hey, Madame,” Magnus calls, throwing aside his towel.

Taako snickers to Merle, “There he goes. Sucker.”

Magnus feels his cheeks burn, but he continues his jog across the icosahedron to catch up with the Director.

“Ma’am, hey, uh, I wanted to talk, can we talk?” he asks, falling into place beside her.

The Director arches an eyebrow at him and sighs. “You thoroughly just got your ass handed to you during an official review, and you want to talk?”

Magnus laughs. “Yeah, but not about my ass. Well, it can be about my ass,” he offers with a leer.

Lucretia gives a soft huff. “I’m quite busy,” she says frostily.

He trots next her her, pantomiming jogging to keep up with her pace. They both know it isn’t necessary.

“We can talk now! As you walk. Walk and talk, very efficient! Multitasking!”

Lucretia snorts as he waves a hand as he talks, smacking the wall with his gesture. “Really? I, uh, well, my faith in your multitasking abilities is…”

“That was totally on purpose, testing uh, structural integrity. Cause I can sure bring the house down.”

Lucretia’s lips purse and she sighs. “Have a good day, Magnus.”

“Oh. Oh well, okay then.”

He distinctly hears Taako cackling behind him. He watches as Lucretia leaves, noting the swish of her robes as the door slides shut behind her.

* * *

He keeps trying.

It’s silly, he knows, but there’s something he can’t put his finger on that tugs him towards her.

He doesn’t know her name, even. But the Director is funny and whip-smart and _sharp_.

She’s attractive as hell, too. Delicate bones and wiry muscles and a stately profile.

“You don’t know her _name_.”

Magnus looks up at Killian and feels his face flush. “Do _you_?”

“Naw,” Carey laughs. She leans forward and wiggles her toes as she reaches for them. “You’re just giving her wicked secondhand embarrassment.”

Killian shrugs and presses a hand to the center of Carey’s back, nudging her deeper into her stretch.

“Oh, is uh… should I shut up about it? I know it’s kind of weird to be… _Y’know_ , about the boss.”

Carey snickers and Killian shrugs, her cheeks dark. Carey rolls out of her stretch onto her back, laughing until she wheezes.

“I’ve absolutely missed a joke,” Magnus mumbles.

“Kils, Kils, tell him!”

“I’m going to kick your ass to next week,” Killian replies mildly. She nudges Carey with her shoe.

Carey wraps her arms around Killian’s calf and tugs once before scrambling up to nudge her side with a claw.

Killian grimaces and leans away. “It’s uh, not. Not weird.”

“No, but you two are,” Magnus remarks, shifting from foot to foot.

“Oh c’mon, can we just practice,” Killian grumbles.

“I’m going to tell him,” Carey says with glee. “Killian had a huge, useless les—”

Killian promptly covers Carey’s snout with her hand. “So okay, uh, the Director is a very handsome, capable woman. And I might have had a tiny, minuscule, did not affect my work, crush— did you just _lick me?_ It’s _on_ , Fangbattle!”

Killian picks Carey up with an arm around her waist and flips her upside down, carting her off to the training field.

Carey wiggles. “Wife her, Magnus, wife her for Killian!! Bring her to Candlenights!”

Magnus splutters, feeling himself go red. “ _Wife_?!”

* * *

“Oh!”

Lucretia sighs and slowly lifts her tray from the line in the cafeteria. She recognizes that faux-surprised sound miles away.

Beside her, Angus looks rather amused. “Mister Magnus is waving at us, ma’am. Maybe we should join them?”

“We’re on a tight schedule, Angus, I’m not sure if we should.”

“He looks real excited to see you, ma’am. I think we should!”

“... _well_ , I suppose.”

Angus blinks up at her with the sort of grin that makes her think that he knows far more than he’s letting on. She feels her face warm.

She suppresses the urge to sigh, knowing it would sound less exasperated and more lovelorn— and that it wouldn’t take the world’s greatest detective to figure out why.

 _Oh, Magnus_.

She doesn’t know why she’s been unsuccessful at deterring him— she never has been, no matter how sternly she spoke or how firmly she tried to hold him in place. But that was always what she loved most about him: that willfulness, the way he could rush in without thought or anxiety. Together, they had been so well balanced.

Apart, she was lonely. She’d been so lonely without him to grab her hand and drag her forward. She’d wondered for so long if he was proud of her, if he’d be proud of the things she’d managed in their time apart.

She’s not been the shy young woman who had to be saved from a bar fight anymore— she hasn’t been her for a long time— but she’s not the stern young woman weighted by responsibility and grief anymore either.

What even is she? Who is she?

Who does Magnus see now, and why does he think she’s _worth_ his time and persistent affection? She’s surely not done anything to warrant it; she’s tried her hardest to push him away.

She and Angus make their way to Magnus’ table, where Magnus is eating a tray-sized serving of mashed potatoes and gravy. She sighs.

“At the risk of sounding too… motherly… where is your protein, Magnus?”

Angus laughs quietly. Magnus flicks potatoes at him. “Sir!” he gasps.

“Magnus.”

“Oh shit, uh. You saw nothing,” Magnus says, cheeks turning pink.

“I most certainly saw something,” she says, taking great delight in watching him fidget in discomfort. “I also see an obscene amount of potatoes. Really?”

“I got chicken under there, promise,” Magnus says with a shrug.

“I’m not one to micromanage my employees,” Lucretia says slowly, arching one eyebrow. “But I would like for you to remain in good physical condition.”

Magnus grins at her, his expression smug. “So you admit I’m good, physically.”

“Oh for—I mean like exertion wise,” she shoots back, feeling her face begin to burn.

Magnus’ eyebrows shoot up. “Wow, I’m flattered, but in front of Ango, Madame?”

“ _Gah.”_

She covers her mouth with her hand, half out of exasperation and half to hide the laughter that threatens to spill out. Magnus wiggles one eyebrow at her and despite herself, she snorts.

“Really? You’re seriously doing that? Please.”

“Continue? Of course.”

“No,” Lucretia replies, holding up her hand. “I will leave.”

“Aw, no fun allowed,” Magnus complains. “Ango, did you know there’s no fun on the moon?”

“No sir, that’s just dogs,” Angus says helpfully.

Lucretia’s shoulders shake with repressed laughter. The longer the absurdity continues, the harder it gets to keep her dignified air. She catches Angus looking at her out of the corner of his eye, his gaze darting from Magnus— who’s leaning against the table, body angled towards her, obvious in his captivated attention— and her. She’s sure she looks like a fool, grinning behind her hand, her own weight canted forward towards the conversation.

“Fun, dogs, those are similes,” Magnus says, waving one hand.

“That’s not what that means, I think, sir,” Angus says gently.

“What was it, Madame?” Magnus asks; the way he says it sends gooseflesh down the back of her neck. He draws it out, enunciates each syllable as his eyes study her face, her hands, the way she knows her eyes turn up when she grins— the track of his greenish eyes is so familiar, so intimate that it’s like a touch. She knows that tone of voice, each flick of his gaze, knows the path of them, eyes, mouth, neck, eyes, knows the way he licks his lips just slightly, a dance they’ve done hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of times.

Once upon a time, the next move would be hers, and memory guides her forward without thought.

“They just run off the damn thing,” she says with a slight roll of her eyes. She laces her fingers against the table, biting her lip against the smirk curling across her face. “Are you insinuating a fun time would be running off the moon?”

“How about you and me try it out?” Magnus asks, grinning wide.

Her heart flips, thuds, and lands somewhere at the top of her mouth. He’s asking her out, the same way he always had— _you and me_ , _me and you_ , so many times that the act of asking was a step itself, the answer so assured that it was merely a guide into the next move, a dip, a spin, hands on hips and fingers in hair. But he is not her partner, and she is no longer herself.

“No dogs, Magnus,” she says gently. “No Candlenights miracles here, no matter how much you try to… sweet talk me into it.”

“Speaking of,” Magnus says, jumping around the awkwardness of her attempt at diverting their conversation away from… From whatever it had become. “We’re throwing a shindig! You should come— oh, and you too, Ango, I guess, since we’re all here.”

“Oh, thank you sir! I knew you were throwing a party already, though,” Angus offers.

Lucretia raises her eyebrow and looked over at Angus. “Did you now?” she asks carefully.

“Yes ma’am, that’s why Mister Taako was requisitioning things from the kitchen. And Mister Magnus did cut down a tree from the quad—”

“Pardon?!”

“SHHH, Ango, SHHH.”

“Oh, was that a secret sir?”

Lucretia snorts and shakes her head. “Magnus, you’re the only one who goes around recklessly chopping trees, I would have known eventually.”

“It’s for Candlenights, though,” he says, like it both explains and pardons everything.

“Go to the Fantasy Costco like everyone else,” she says sternly. “I cannot allow you to continue to chop down the trees on the quad.”

Magnus makes a face at Angus, she looks up to the ceiling and pinches her nose as she counts to three. “And do not take it out on Angus.”

Angus laughs softly, sounding for once like the child he is. A pang stabs through her gut. A child. He’s a child and she… And Magnus… What a mess she’s made for herself.

“Okay, well, what do you say, Madame?”

“I’ll do my best to think about it,” she says primly. She really has no intentions of going, not really.

“Do your best to say yes, please?”

She makes the mistake of catching his gaze.

She catches the full brunt of his puppy-dog gaze, complete with pout. Her chest aches, her fingers twitching with the urge to reach out and pinch his cheek like she would have years ago, then brush his hair back with her fingers.

She sighs. “Okay, fine. I’ll go. Is this a white elephant scenario or just a show up one?”

Magnus beams at her and she feels herself flush. It’s been years and years and still the simpleness of causing his delight makes her feel giddy.

“We’re just all showing up, to be honest. It’s a thrown together sort of thing,” he says. “Figured since there’s nothing being hosted by the Bureau, we’d just do one ourselves.”

“I see,” Lucretia says. “Thank you for the invite… now, Magnus, don’t you have training to be at. Oh, say, five minutes ago?”

“Shit!”

He shoves a few more spoonfuls of mashed potatoes into his mouth and bolts up from his chair. He scoops his plate up as he shoots to his feet.

“Okaythanksgottagobye,” he says in a breath, potatoes spraying from his mouth.

Lucretia hates that she finds it disgustingly endearing. She sighs and waves when he turns around at the garbage can and points to her, then makes a thumbs-up.

Angus laughs quietly beside her, and she turns, fixing her gaze onto him. He grins at her before carefully breaking the crust on his shepherd's pie with his spoon.

“Angus, dear, you look like you have something to say?”

“Oh, no ma’am, I wouldn’t _dare,_ ” he says calmly. He blows on his spoon, then takes a bite. Once he’s swallowed, he adds: “I remember what happened in volume eight of _Caleb Cleveland,_ of course.”

Lucretia pauses and tips her head as she tries to recall her _Caleb Cleveland_ knowledge— it’s a bit fuzzy since she read them in a span of forty-eight hours in an attempt to bond with her newest and youngest employee. If she recalls correctly, that one had Caleb’s friends concoct an elaborate scheme around a school dance and there’d been…

She stabs her fork at her salad a bit more forcefully than needed. How badly has she failed at being impartial if a ten-year-old is dropping hints about the unsubtle nature of her feelings?

* * *

He’d had _plans_ for Candlenights. Maybe they wouldn’t have been successful, but he’d had plans.

Invite the Director— _Lucretia,_ his brain supplies with a happy little thrill, _her name is Lucretia—_ to the party, chat with her over drinks, give her her present, hopefully collect, get a date.

Not… not her losing her cool at the party because _Lucas Miller is an ass,_ getting sent on a mission, chopping off Merle’s arm and getting endless shit about it, eating a magic rock on impulse, shaking down some kid that only wanted his mother back, getting his ass kicked by _ghosts_ , and then getting turned into a twisty slide _in front of the Director,_ on top of getting thoroughly chewed out by her.

Her voice when she asked them why they didn’t trust her… _gods._

He turns her pendant between his fingers, watching the way the light plays off of the metal and the chatoyance of the stone within.

He presses it to his forehead, resisting the urge to press it to his lips. He imagines its warmth is from resting at the hollow of her neck, his forehead pressed against her chest.

He had been so sure she’d been flirting in the cafeteria. So sure that it meant something when he was the one she gave the stone of farspeech to. But then… everything after. Her frustration, the clusterfuck that was the Miller lab, and the Philosopher’s Stone.

 _And_ she’d called his backrub coupon the nightmare scenario. Not exactly a promising response; not that he blames her, of course. In retrospect, it was a spontaneous thing, much like eating the Stone had been. He had an idea and executed it without much thought.

It’s not like he’s moping about it. He’s a grown man, who’s learned to live with disappointment and embarrassment. He most certainly hasn’t been laying in bed for hours on end, staring blankly at the ceiling, replaying the entire mission over and over to figure out how it could have gone better, how he could have kept Lucretia’s face from faltering with grief over Lucas’ ‘death’, how to contain the Stone, how he could have actually _remembered_ to follow her instructions.

He drags the pendant slowly down the bridge of his nose, then taps it against his mouth as he thinks about the way her eyes crinkled up when she laughed at him in the cafeteria. She’d been receptive, then; he tries to think about the way her hand had covered her mouth, the softness of her voice; but he sees her face twisted into fear and anxiety as she handed over her necklace, Lucas chattering on the other end, hears her voice, heavy and raw, as she asks about trust.

He sighs and taps the pendant to his teeth. He hears the door to their apartment creak open, close, then a light set of footsteps towards his door. He sets the pendant aside just as his door opens. They already tease him enough for his crush— Taako and Merle had delighted in describing the intricacies of the Director’s facial journey when they extracted the Stone from him.

He rolls over and squints at Merle; he eyes the smug grin on his face. “What?”

“So because _some people,_ ” Merle drawls. “Feel bad about people gettin’ their arms chopped off—”

“I saved your life, old man!”

“They give spa resort trips,” Merle finishes up. He leans against the doorway, grinning; Magnus has an extraordinarily bad feeling about where this conversation is about to go, considering he can hear Taako sniggering somewhere in the common area. “With a second guest pass.”

“I’m not going into the sauna with you, if you’re asking, thanks.”

Merle snorts. “As if. No, yours truly asked a certain lady someone to come with.”

Magnus sits upright. “No.”

“A certain lady someone who _you’ve_ been sulking over when you haven’t been off doing whatever it is you do.”

“No,” Magnus repeats. “She said no, right, she totally said no.”

Merle laughs and winks, complete with a set of fingerguns that Magnus never ever wants to see him make ever again.

“You’re shitting me!”

“The Director is a very… _fine_ lady.”

Magnus starts yelling, just to cut out Merle’s voice, but the dwarf still continues.

“So she said since she feels responsible, she’d go along with me— mudbaths and massages here I come! Have you ever wondered what she’d look like out of those robes—”

“Stop oh my god, stop being gross, please, stop!”

Merle cackles and pushes off the door frame. “So, thanks, is what I’m trying to say.”

Magnus sits, dumbfounded, for all of thirty seconds, staring at the empty door before he bolts to his feet. He scoops Lucretia’s stone from his bed and the small package wrapped in Fantasy Costco-branded paper from his bedside, shoves his feet into his boots, and stomps out of his room.

“Look at Casanova go,” Taako drawls as Magnus barrels through the living room. “You might have more luck with a shirt.”

“Shit.”

Taako laughs and flings a flannel overshirt in his direction. “This is interesting. Go, go forth. Cha’boy’s got gold on Merle being a disaster and getting sent home during the spa trip, so please, don’t get fired before he does.”

Magnus catches the shirt and frowns. “Do you, I don’t think I’ll get fired,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, we haven’t so far, right?”

Taako snorts and crosses his ankles over the back of the sofa. “Listen, hombre, this is the nicest place I’ve crashed in like… _ever_. If you and Merle ruin this by being horndogs, I’m stealing all your shit.”

Magnus pauses, arm half into his shirt where it’s stuck, sleeves balled up into themselves. There’s a brittleness in the words that catches him off guard.

“Hey,” Magnus says, finally wiggling his arm through his shirt. “I’m not going to… I’m not going to do anything that’s gonna get us in trouble. Maybe _me_ , but… like, I’m not gonna push it. I like it here too.”

“Didn’t say I _liked_ it here,” Taako mutters, sinking father into the cushions until all Magnus can see are his legs, still slung over the sofa. “But whatever, go pant at a brick wall.”

Magnus frowns at Taako’s feet, but he has enough Taako Experience now to know a closed conversation. “Right-o,” he says.

With that, he slips out of their dormitory-slash-apartment and makes his way up to the main dome.

Between post-holiday blues and the stupor that befell the entire base after the wild _hey the world didn’t get turned to pink tourmaline, nice!_ parties (slash _we love Boyland this is what he’d want let’s get smashed_ party that he’d turned down attending), the hallways are empty. Not like the base is overcrowded or ever truly bustling, but it’s nice to not run into someone as he speedwalks (not jogs) towards the Director’s office.

He circles around to the back hallway— the dais room is intimidating enough when there’s people in it. The thought of walking through it while it’s empty just creeps him out.

It’s not until he’s knocking on her door that he realizes that she might not be in her office. It’s early evening, three days after a holiday, and she has a spa trip to pack for. (His chest twinges uncomfortably at the thought.)

“Come in, it’s unlocked,” she calls, her voice faint through the door.

He pushes the door open and gives a tentative wave as she looks up. She’s wearing a pair of glasses, half-moons and gold, a chain sparkling around her face; his chest twinges again. He didn’t know she needed reading glasses, but it feels right to see her in them—she’s so…

He clears his throat. “Hi, I uh, didn’t actually expect you to be in here.”

Lucretia purses her lips, then laughs as she shakes her head and takes her glasses off, letting them rest around her neck on their chain. “Here I am.”

“Here you are, yeah, uh,” he says, stepping further into her office, letting the door close behind him. “So.”

“What can I help you with, Magnus?” she leads, setting aside her pen and the large stack of papers in front of her. “It must be… urgent, yes?”

“Urgent? No, well, sort of, but it’s not an emergency!”

Lucretia laughs again and folds her hands on her desk. “Magnus, I know I’ve let you three boys be lax about uniform here, but I’d… be rather thankful if you tried to remain dressed in my office?”

“What?”

He looks down and then laughs. “I have a shirt on!”

“It’s not buttoned, you look like, I don’t know, some vagrant werewolf or something equally silly,” Lucretia says.

“But it is on my body,” Magnus retorts. He laughs as Lucretia looks towards the ceiling.

“I guess? At least you’re not buck ass naked,” she says evenly, giving a slight shrug. “What can I do for you?”

He walks towards her desk, running his thumb over the necklace in his palm. “So, the other day, Candlenights.”

“Yes?”

“The, the mission, with the crinkle-tinkles and the relic,” he says awkwardly, feeling heat rise in his neck as he watches her nose wrinkle slightly at the mention of the Philosopher’s Stone. He looks over her shoulder at the painting behind her.

He studies the way the paint is layered on the canvas. “You, you said you wanted notebooks? You needed them?”

“I, well, yes,” Lucretia murmurs, sounding a bit taken aback.

“I had to run by the Fantasy Costco for some, uh… for TP and I… here,” Magnus says, looking at her as he holds out the wrapped package.

Lucretia stares up at him, her mouth slightly parted. She doesn’t immediately reach for the package, so he lays it on her desk, mouth dry and stomach churning.

“And, I forgot to give you back your necklace,” he continues. He puts it atop the wrapped gift, touching it once more before drawing back. “Sorry I kept it.”

“Oh, I— Magnus, I…” Lucretia shakes her head and sets the necklace aside. “It’s really just a glorified necklace now,” she says softly. “Since Lucas and… well, he and his mother were… Thank you for returning it.”

Magnus shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable with the knowledge that Lucas isn’t quite as dead as they led her to believe. He clears his throat and shrugs. “Sorry about uh. Yeah, all of that.”

“It comes with the territory,” Lucretia sighs. She taps her finger against the wrapped package. “You wrapped toilet paper, huh?”

Magnus snorts. “No, open it. Consider it a-a late Candlenights slash… Slash sorry I ate a magic rock gift.”

Lucretia laughs and shakes her head. “That was a very… Foolhardy thing you did,” she says. She flips the package and gently runs her fingers underneath the seam of the wrapping, unfolding the paper carefully.

Magnus watches her hands, entranced by the delicate movement of her fingers. She wears no jewelry, and there’s a smudge of cerulean ink on her fingertips. He swallows and rubs the back of his neck as Lucretia gasps softly.

“Holy shit, wow.”

“I know, maybe, maybe red was the wrong color,” he says. “In hindsight, what with the Red Robes and all, but I… it caught my eye.”

Lucretia strokes the embossed leather with a single finger. He watches in silence, biting his cheek, as she slowly traces the entirety of the design— two hummingbirds in flight, surrounded by flowers.

Her finger shakes.

“No,” she says, her voice tight. “No, no, it’s… Magnus, this was extraordinarily thoughtful, I… this is, just…”

She looks up at him, her eyes shining. He wants to reach out, cup her cheek in his hand. Smooth his thumb against her mouth, ease away the threat of tears.

“It means… it means a lot, thank you,” she whispers. She covers the journal with her palm, sliding it closer to her.

“Also, uh. Just so you know, this doesn’t negate that coupon. This is additional. So you got two gifts from Magnus,” he says.

Lucretia closes her eyes and presses her lips together. “Magnus,” she says. “Don’t ruin your very thoughtful gift.”

“Hey, now, the coupon is— I did that special, just for you,” Magnus retorts, shaking a finger at her. “That backrub is just for you.”

Lucretia looks up at him and sighs slowly. “Magnus, while that’s all well and fine, that was very inappropriate to give in front of everyone.”

“It’s not my fault that everyone here’s nosy,” Magnus mutters.

Lucretia is pointedly silent. Magnus raises his palms. “I get it, but I really _did_ put thought into it.”

Another moment of silence.

Magnus clears his throat as Lucretia just _looks_ at him. “I think you should collect.”

Lucretia sighs and reaches up to rub her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. “Magnus,” she sighs. “Like I said, the nightmare scenario. This is the nightmare. Scenario. The levels of inappropriate this borders on are… I am your boss.”

Magnus throws an arm out, gesturing around the office. “I know, but, but you, you’re going on that trip with Merle!”

Lucretia blinks and then gives a small huff. “Well, yes, but I feel partly responsible for the whole… disarming thing. Also, it’s… an entirely different situation. Magnus... don’t think that I... “

She shifts in her chair uncomfortably, clasping her hands together in her lap. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you flirting.”

“So you _did_ notice,” Magnus says, beaming. “I’d wondered!”

“I have,” she confirms, raising one stately brow at him. “I… it would be… unkind for me to ignore it any longer.”

All warmth drains from his face. He swallows hard and shrugs, rubbing the gooseflesh on the back of his neck. “No, it’s. It’s cool, you don’t… please continue to ignore it?”

Her face softens considerably. She reaches out across her desk, easing out of her chair onto her toes. She gently touches his elbow with warm, ink-spotted fingers.

“Magnus, I’m extremely flattered,” she says gently. “I… you must understand my situation here, it… My personal feelings cannot impede on what I do here.”

Magnus’ hands twitch with the desire to grab her hand from his arm, hold it tight. It would be easy to take her fingers and bend his head just so, kiss her knuckles. Or to lean forward— she’s right there, looking up at him, her face solemn and lightly lined, her lips parted.

Slowly, what she’s said sinks in.

“You’re not… uninterested?” he asks, reaching to touch the back of her hand. “I… so you _were_ flirting with me in the cafeteria.”

Lucretia withdraws her hand, pressing them flat to her desk. “I don’t recall,” she says lightly. She sits back down with a sigh. “If I was, Magnus, it was very, very unprofessional of me, and I’m sorry for the impression it gives.”

Magnus presses his lips together as he thinks. “You should still collect,” he says after a moment. “I think you deserve a backrub.”

“Magnus, I haven’t had to fill out forms for sexual harassment since Brian decided a ‘low five’ was slapping people on their bottoms, I suggest you not push it.”

Magnus backs away, hands in the air. “Cool, cool, I just, it’s not a lie, I give killer backrubs.”

“I don’t doubt it,” she says. She sighs and runs her fingers across the embossed cover of the journal. “Do I really seem _that_ uptight, though?”

“Not uptight, not really… just hard working? A little uptight, a little, but… not in a bad way,” Magnus says. “You just, you have a lot that you worry about, right? And do. I know you work later than we ever do, filing our shitty reports and dealing with the damage we do. And that’s just us three, who knows what else goes on.”

“Oh, compared to you three? Every other report is as bland as oatmeal.”

Magnus winces and laughs. “Point taken. Just, I never see you relaxing or just doing… doing _stuff_ , that’s not paperwork. Hobbies, or something. What you’re doing, it’s big, and probably a heavy thing. You probably could use a break or a massage.”

“I suppose… I suppose you have a point,” Lucretia sighs. “One massage. To be polite, and so you aren’t so upset that I’m going on that trip with Merle.”

Magnus grins. “Great! Take your shirt off and I’ll get started!”

“ _Pardon?_ ”

Magnus stops, heat flooding his face as his stomach lurches into his mouth. He finds his mouth suddenly dry, tongue sticking to his teeth as he tries to backpedal.

“Like, your, your cape thing, I— the overshirt not, not everything, I—you know what, uh, I’m just going to… I’m just gonna _go,_ I get your point that, okay, bye,” he stammers.

And then Lucretia laughs.

Magnus swears it sounds like bells, like music, like _home_. He watches as Lucretia scoots her chair back and undoes the fastening at her neck.

“I’m goofing, Magnus,” she says warmly. “Goodness, your _face_.”

Magnus gapes across the desk at her, watching as she shrugs out of her sleeved capelet, revealing the navy dress she wears underneath, sleeveless and belted at her waist.

Magnus swallows hard, curling his fingers into his palms as he stares, dumbfoundead. The sight of her training months ago had been burned into his mind, but it was from afar, in poor lighting.

This, up close, with only a desk between them and the promise of his hands on her skin, is too much. He licks his lips and tries to find his voice.

“You’re sure, like, that this is okay?”

Lucretia laughs softly. “Probably not from an HR standpoint, but it would be a shame to wonder if you were just making up your abilities to impress me.”

“Hell no!” Magnus shoots back, her gentle ribbing shaking him from his stupor. “Best backrubs in Faerun. Guaranteed.”

“We’ll see.”

Magnus snorts and circles her desk, cracking his knuckles for show. “You’ll be a puddle in no time at all.”

Lucretia makes a small noise of disbelief, but rolls her shoulders and resituates herself on her chair as he circles behind her.

He skims his fingers against the back of her neck, skin tingling as he brushes the soft curls at the nape of her neck. Her skin is hot to the touch, soft, and scattered with scars that are muted with time on her dark skin.

He laughs uncomfortably, feeling heat begin to spike in his gut. “You’re kinda ripped, aren’t you, Madame?”

She jolts as he reaches down and squeezes a bicep, then laughs, obediently lifting her arm to flex. She leans back to look at him over her shoulder, her hair brushing against his bare stomach.

“You act like you’ve never met a competent woman, Magnus,” she chides gently.

“Naw,” Magnus says, clearing his throat to rid it of the sudden hoarseness he feels creeping up in him. “I uh, I have experience with those.”

He lays his hands across Lucretia’s shoulders, thumbs to either side of her spine, and presses in firmly.

The noise she makes jerks in his stomach, burning his face and hands.

“Someone’s tense,” he says, rubbing slow circles against the base of her neck. “How do you even have knots right here?”

“I’m talented?” Lucretia says.

“Does it hurt?”

He moves down and her vertebrae crack as he pushes up; she shakes her head. “No, gods, that’s… that’s absolutely wonderful.”

Magnus laughs and grips the tops of her shoulders, working out and down; Lucretia drops her head and closes her eyes, breath catching each time he comes across a new knot.

He moves from her back to her arm, dragging his fingers down slowly to her wrist, circling it entirely with his palm. “You have terrible posture when you sit at your desk,” he says, distracting himself from the sensation of her skin on his palms, the sound of her breath fluttering.

Already, he feels himself begin to twitch, and he’s thankful for the looseness of his sleep pants— there’s no need to get himself kicked out, not when he’s made this much headway with her.

“Yes, I’m aware,” Lucretia sighs as he rubs the palm of her hand. He moves to the other arm, watching the way her body begins to relax and ease into his touch.

By the time he’s done, Magnus finds himself in need of a good cold shower— and Lucretia’s pleased, sleepy expression doesn’t help at all.

“Now if only you could be as good at your job as you were at that,” Lucretia says.

“I think I’m pretty good at my job,” Magnus says. “We only killed like, one entire town.”

Lucretia laughs and shakes her head. “That’s pretty terrible!”

Magnus grins down at her, and on impulse, reaches out to slide a hand through her hair fondly.

“Yeah, but, we got loads better, that right there was a learning experience,” he says, as she turns her head towards him. He gives her roots a gentle tug, just something playful like he used to do with Julia.

Lucretia makes a small noise in the back of her throat, eyes wide as her hand flies up to her mouth; her cheeks are dark and her pupils huge. “Magnus!” she chides, her voice muffled.

He jolts like he’s been shocked with magic, and steps back quickly, his hands up and body burning, burning. “Shit, I— I’m, that was, listen, I— I wasn’t thinking.”

Lucretia shakes her head and her eyes track down from his face to his crotch, where her gaze lingers for a moment. His heart thuds in his ears and he resists the urge to cover himself.

She drops her hand and licks her lips. “You, uh… you should probably go now.”

“Yes, uh, yeah. Um. I… I’m… I’ll see you later, Lucre—Ma’am, uh, Madame.”

Her eyes flick up to his face, and she shakes her head slightly. “Thank you for the gifts,” she says, picking up her capelet and holding it to her chest.

“I really like you,” he blurts out. “Really, really like you, uh.”

“Yes, Magnus,” Lucretia says firmly, but without heat. Her voice is quiet, fond. “I gathered.”

“Right. Um. Cool. I’ll? I’ll see you around?”

“Yes, Magnus. Now, go take care of your… well.”

Magnus swears and whips off his shirt, tying it around his waist as he backs out of Lucretia’s office. “I’m sorry!”

She laughs once and shakes her head, looking almost sad. “I’ll see you later, Magnus, now close the door behind you,” she instructs.

The soft way she says his name feels like a caress, like she’s sighed it in something other than frustration. It wells up within him, beading underneath his skin, threatening to spill over.

Magnus eases the door shut, but not quickly enough to cut off the shaking, desperate inhale he hears behind him.

His heart lurches, then soars.


	2. You Invite Me

In retrospect, it’s a miracle he manages to make it to his room at all. Sure, he’s wearing sweatpants, and sure, he’s got his shirt tied around his waist, but there’s nothing to hide the flush that creeps down his neck, across his cheeks to his ears.

It’s a miracle that Taako’s not still lounging about, that Merle’s off doing… whatever it is that Merle does when he disappears at night.

He decides against a shower; his mind is already racing, conjuring half-formed fantasies of Lucretia and her skin and the sounds she made with his hands on her shoulders.

He stumbles to his room, face burning. He’s well past the point of shame— he got over that _months_ ago, after that first cold shower after watching her decimate the training robots. Now that, _that_ was shameful.

Despite all the guilt and the weirdness, it feels right to lean against his locked door, hand over his mouth as he presses the back of his skull to the wood, breath hot against his palm as her voice, her skin, everything, swirls in his mind.

She saw him, she knows, she must know he’s doing this; she sounded undone, in that one moment.

Arousal shudders through him, settling at the base of his spine. He rakes his hand down his face, exhaling hard.

She knows exactly what she does to him now, but gods, he hadn’t meant for it to end up that way, he’d tried to keep himself in check. Embarrassment wars with his desire long enough for him to push off the door and make his way to his bed.

He’d meant to simply flirt a little, not, not lay it all out in plain sight.

But, the little voice in the back of his mind whispers, she’s not uninterested.

She’s anything but, it continues. And it’s right.

He sits at the edge of his bed, palms flat on his thighs. His heart pounds in his throat, in his gut. The unfocused look on her face, the press of her shoulders against his hands.

The way she’d sighed his name, the quiet moan he heard as the door latched behind him.

He wonders if she’s doing this too—if she’s in her office, skirt hiked up and her legs spread underneath her desk, hand between her legs as she thinks of him, of his hands on her back and the knowledge that right then, that second, he’s thinking of her.

He swings his legs up onto the mattress and settles into his sheets, spreading his legs out as he brings his knees up.

He exhales slowly, until there’s no more air left, then breathes in deep. He bites his lip and closes his eyes.

He thinks of Lucretia, her hair down from its usual bun, her skin bare and dark. The lithe lines of muscle, the interplay of bones and skin and scar. The swell of her breasts from over and behind, the dark line of her cleavage disappearing into her dress.

It doesn’t take much at all to bring himself from half-hard to twitching against his thigh—he doesn’t even have to touch himself for that, but he does. He drags a hand down his chest, rubbing a nipple with the rough pad of his thumb.

Her hands would be calloused—from her staff, from writing. Both hands, his mind supplies, lost in the haze of pleasure as he slips his free hand down the front of his sweatpants and into his underwear.

She’d use both hands, at the same time, equally calloused. He doesn’t know where the idea is from, but it thrills him, seems right.

He thinks of the nape of her neck, and what it would taste like. Her office always vaguely smells of cinnamon, some oil she sets out, or perhaps her own perfume. Maybe she’d taste the same, skin and spice and sweat.

He cups himself slowly, carefully, imagining the way it would feel if it were her. She’d be light-touched, slow, deliberate.

He curls his fingers loosely, like he’s searching, gingerly pumping himself because she’d be watching, categorizing, memorizing.

She would sigh his name, just like that, and he wouldn’t be able to handle it.

“Like this,” he whispers to the fantasy of her, his eyes shut tight against the wave of arousal that curls his toes and knocks his breath as he adjusts his grip on himself.

He rubs his thumb across his tip, smearing precum, but it’s not quite enough. He pulls his hand back, fumbling at his bedside table for the small bottle of lube he’d gotten planet-side when it became apparent he’d soon be spending a lot of time with himself and his hand. He shoves his sweatpants down and pours it over himself without thought, back arching as he squirms from the cold liquid on his dick.

He can almost hear her laughter in his ears, because she’d be fondly amused at his impatientness.

He wraps his hand back around himself and groans at the ease with which he can thrust into his fist.

It won’t be long— he aches for release already and has no desire to make himself wait.

He turns his head to press his cheek to his pillow, adjusting his hand and fondling his balls as he gasps, imagining Lucretia.

Lucretia, laid out beneath him, tall and wiry and gorgeous. She’s slender, trim, but he’s seen her core muscles— her riding him would be…

He’s dizzy thinking of it, of looking up at her face. Her eyes would be closed, her hands would be on his chest, thumbs brushing against his nipples. He mimics the action with his free hand, panting out a soft noise. Her legs would be tight on his hips, and he would watch, awestruck, as she moves like a wave above him, tits swaying and her chin tucked down with pleasure.

And he would guide her, watch the way her body moves, the way her muscles strain at her core as she works herself on him, closer and closer.

And she would call his name, and she would be so close.

He grunts, and rolls onto his stomach; he jams a half-folded pillow between his legs and clutches the sheets, forehead pressed into the mattress.

He’d roll her over, tuck her long legs over his elbows to be close to her; he’d press up chest-to-chest and wind her hair though his fingers and pull. Her nails would find his back, and as she gets closer to climax, she’d dig in, grow quieter, until her voice was a quiet breath in his ear.

He ruts into the pillow, and his mind goes wild.

She would be hot and dripping for him, and he’d go in so easily because she wants him, is ready for him, and she would kiss his ear as he bows his head against her shoulder.

“Lucretia,” he groans into the sheets.

Saying it aloud sends a pulse between his legs. He grinds down harder, faster.

“Gods, Lucretia, Lucretia—”

The word feels heavy on his tongue the closer he gets. His body tightens, shakes, heat in his gut spiraling into a coil so tight he feels like he’s going to break into a thousand pieces before he even comes.

His mouth stumbles over her name, and he can almost hear her, feel her mouth on his skin. He shoves his hand down his stomach and wraps it around his cock, tightening his fingers as he grinds forward, desperate for skin against skin.

“Oh, _Lucy—_ ”

He comes against his hand, on his pillow, moaning a nickname he’d never used, but it feels right— it all feels _right_ , the fantasy, the name, the sensation of cooling cum on his hand and thighs.

He rolls onto his back, panting as he blinks his eyes open, dispelling the fantasy and the rightness, but not the want.

It still burns in his gut, bright and hot and needing.

He covers his eyes with his forearm and tries to sleep, knowing that there, too, he’ll want her.

* * *

Merle comes back from the spa trip smelling more like flowers than usual, looking disgruntled despite being groomed and smooth-skinned. He drops a few pieces of gold onto Magnus’ lap as he stretches in the middle of the living room.

“I don’t know _how_ you knew she’d be oblivious to flirting,” he grumbles.

Magnus smirks up at Merle. “No dice, old man?”

“She wanted to talk about religion,” Merle says, scratching his beard with his soulwood arm. “Not that I’m complainin’, but she dodged everything like a pro. Didn’t even get embarrassed. Drank like a fish.”

“Too bad,” Magnus leers, grinning so hard his face hurts. “That’s what you get for being a shit about it.”

“Not like you’re havin’ much luck either kid,” Merle says with a laugh, waving his hand dismissively as he makes his way to his room.

Magnus feels no need to correct him. He simply slips the coins into his pocket and continues to stretch.

* * *

Magnus doesn’t go out of his way to run into Lucretia after her return from the spa.

Instead, he devotes his time to training with Carey and hoping he runs into her in the hallways. He knows that if he seeks her out, anything he does will be rebuffed, but if he plays it cool, he might have a chance.

His next chance comes about two weeks after her trip with Merle; he’s leaving the training dome with Carey when he sees her crossing the quad.

“Hey, I uh, I gotta go,” he tells Carey. She snickers and flashes a thumbs up.

“Go get some!” she teases as he jogs off.

He slows his pace the closer he gets to Lucretia, but he catches up to her in no time at all— in fact, it seems like she slows once he gets closer to her.

“Madame, hey!” he says, waving at her. “How have you been?”

“A bit busy, since someone seems to have vandalized our cafeteria,” she says, sounding a bit harried. “And someone also snuck into the provisions and revised our quarterly order to include a rough ton of pancake mix. Magnus…?”

“That one was _not_ me,” Magnus says. He laughs and shakes his head. “I’m a waffle guy.”

“If you say so,” Lucretia sighs. “How have you been?”

“Oh, doing this and that. Carey is teaching me some rogue skills,” he says. “So I can do more than throw myself at shit.”

“Istus save us all, you knowing how to pick locks,” Lucretia drawls. “No one will be safe.”

“Uh, the rate it’s going, you’ll be safe for a little while,” Magnus mutters. “I’m shitty at being sneaky.”

Lucretia laughs and holds her bracer up to a door to unlock it. “I think you’ll pick it up,” she promises.

“Well, thank you for that vote of confidence, Madame,” he says. “That aside, are you busy?”

“I’m always busy, Magnus,” she sighs.

“Have you been to the wine place yet? The uh, Sip and Fondle?”

Lucretia snorts so hard he thinks she might have sneezed. “It’s the Chug ‘N’ Squeeze, and no, I have not, and _no_ I will not. Not when you call it the, the _Sip and Fondle._ ”

Magnus laughs, “Okay, so that wasn’t smooth at all.”

“As sandpaper,” she agrees. She comes to a stop in front of the elevator to the basement levels and holds up her wrist again. “Nice try.”

“How about this? I can cook you dinner,” he offers.

Lucretia squints at him for a moment, then sighs. “I’m not… do you realize how inappropriate it would be for me to dine in the dormitories?”

“You came for Candlenights,” Magnus retorts. “The coupon, too.”

“That was… very different. Magnus, I’m sorry, but…”

“We could eat it in your office,” he says, seeing her face start to soften. “Or, if it’s too much, we could just go to the cafeteria, but it’s not really a treat, y’know?”

He _knows_ she feels it too, the tug of attraction and fascination in the pit of his gut. The feeling that he _knows_ her, without having ever met. The way she relaxed into his touch and the noise she made when he had his hand in her hair. The lingering glances.

He knows there could be something. He knows he wants there to be something. He hopes she wants it, too.

He thinks briefly about the things he knows about her. She’s secretive, but delightfully sarcastic. She has a great backhand slap, and can toss them around like rag dolls during training. She’s tense as a strung wire and her laughter is always sudden and loud, like it’s been tugged free from something deep within her.

He knows that she’s lonely, he knows it like he knows that _he’s_ lonely, like his own name, like breathing. Angus let it slip that she had been friendly with Lucas, despite his jerkiness, and that she was sad about losing him and Boyland at once. He knows that she feels overwhelmed, judging by the details of the trip he’d pried out of Merle.

Even if she doesn’t have feelings for him, he wants to be there for her, wants to spend time with her.

“Well. I… it’s still terribly unprofessional,” she mumbles. “But… In my office… I suppose that could work.”

He knows without her even saying that she will. He grins and darts forward, wrapping her into a tight, but brief, hug.

“It’s a date, then!”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lucretia murmurs, a smile twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Now, I have things I need to attend to.”

She steps into the elevator, gracing him with a small smile as the doors slide shut between them.

He grins and does a little fistpump. “ _Score!_ ”

* * *

It takes all of his spare gold, two bottles of nail polish, and two weeks of chore duty to convince Taako to help him with dinner. It takes two hours longer than Taako said it would take to make up the simple grain salad and goat cheese balls for his ‘date’. (Mostly because Taako outright refused to touch anything except the drinks, choosing to instead sit on the table and direct (and snipe) Magnus’ clumsy attempts.)He ends up with something passable, all tucked inside of a magicked up picnic basket that he hopes isn’t _too_ conspicuous as he makes his way up to Lucretia’s office.

He finds the door already unlocked and open for him, and is surprised to see Lucretia sitting on the floor already, a large blanket spread out on the marble floor.

“What? I’m not eating at my desk,” she says instead of greeting him.

He laughs and shakes his head, closing the door behind him. He hears the lock catch as it closes, sending a spike of nerves through his system.

“I mean, good thinking,” he says with a grin. He steps over a box of papers on the floor, then sets the picnic box down. He sinks to the floor in front of Lucretia and grins. “I like it, it’s cute.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of comfort,” she says, leaning forward. “What’d you make?”

“Hungry?” he teases, opening up the basket.

“Honestly? Yes, I’m starving. I uh… I’ve actually been looking forward to this,” she admits softly, watching as Magnus pulls out plates and the containers.

Magnus looks up and smiles at her. “I’m really glad to hear that,” he murmurs. “Thank you for telling me.”

She shrugs, biting her lower lip as she looks away. “I mean, it’s just been ages since I’ve had home-cooked food, not that the cafeteria isn’t good or anything, but, I just don’t have the time.”

“You don’t need to justify being excited for anything,” Magnus soothes. He pulls the lids off. “So these are spring-onion goat cheese balls, and the salad is grain-based with peas and mint. And this is just strawberry lemonade.”

Lucretia grins and looks up at him, “Holy shit, this is… Wow.”

“Full disclosure,” Magnus says, pouring her a glass of lemonade. “Taako helped, and I think he poured half a bottle of vodka into this lemonade.”

“Hot diggity shit, that’s wonderful,” she whispers, “Can… Can I eat?”

Magnus laughs and gestures to her plate. “Go for it, sheesh, I made it for eating!”

She picks up the tiny set of tongs provided in the picnic basket and puts cheeseballs on her plate; she pops one in her mouth before Magnus even offers her the container of crackers, her eyes closing as she grins.

“This is so good,” she says, and Magnus has to laugh, because her mouth is full and it’s completely undignified, watching the Director scarf down cheese balls like she’s never eaten before in her entire life. “I’m sorry, this must be rude, you’re just watching me eat.”

“No, you’re fine,” he says, putting some crackers and a few lumpy balls onto his plate. “Like I said, for eating.”

“I just,” she says, covering her mouth as she realizes it’s full of cheese. “I’m not with it on date etiquette.”

Magnus’ stomach flips and warmth blooms in its wake. “Well, I’m not either,” he says softly, resisting the urge to tease her about admitting that they are, indeed, on a date. “So we’re even.”

Lucretia drops her hand after she swallows her current mouthful and smiles at him. “Well, in that case, I’m going to destroy that salad, because it looks _wonderful_.”

Magnus laughs and gestures towards it. “Go ahead,” he says. “Eat whatever you like. I’m glad you’re enjoying it so far.”

The rest of the food is devoured with laughter, small talk, and the consumption of most of Taako’s strongly spiked lemonade.

Magnus feels pleasantly warm and slightly fuzzy around the edges, cheeks sore from grinning and voice shot from talking. In a delightful twist, once Lucretia dropped decorum, she’s just as gossipy as the rest of the Bureau is, and just as interested in the outcomes of the various bets the members have ongoing (he pointedly does not ask about where she stands on the running bets the rest of the organization has on _them_ ).

Much to his dismay, time does not stand still, and it comes time to clean up. He brushes fingers with Lucretia as they fold up the blanket.

“This was delightful, Magnus,” Lucretia says softly. “I haven’t… I haven’t had a night to just talk, to just relax like this in… years. Between you and Merle, you boys seem determined to make me take my time.”

“Wait,” Magnus says, watching her place the folded blanket on her desk. “You mean to tell me that… you don’t ever just sit and talk with anyone? Over dinner or tea?”

Lucretia shakes her head and shrugs, looking across her desk to the portrait of herself. “No, not really. I suppose I don’t have the time.”

“Do, do you have a family or _anything_? Like on the base? Or…?”

Lucretia flinches and then shakes her head, the small smile slipping away to the regally bland face he sees so often.

“No,” she says shortly. “I don’t. I have no… it’s just me. I mean, I was close with the Millers, but...”

Magnus winces at the way her voice cracks. “I’m sorry,” he says softly. “Angus told me that you and Lucas were close, I…”

Magnus trails off and rubs the back of his neck with his hand, the aftertaste of alcohol and his blunder sour in his mouth.

“Does that mean you don’t have anyone to keep you company?” he asks softly.

“No,” Lucretia snaps. The _and I don’t need it_ isn’t said, but the way she shifts away from him, leaning against the edge of her desk, screams it. The look on her face, though— haunted, desperately calm— makes him think she does.

“You know, I, uh, don’t, I don’t either,” he offers. “Have a family down there, on… on Faerun. I get it, it’s easy to… to lock yourself away. After my wife died, I just closed myself off; it wasn’t good or, or healthy. It’s taken until just recently for me to, to realize that you don’t have to be—”

“It’s been just me for a long time,” she cuts in, voice as flat as the awkward tension that bubbles between them. “I lost my family to the Relics, Magnus. I’ll never have them back.”

“You, I mean you have all this, the Bureau, all these people—they’re all good people. You have me, I’m here, too,” Magnus says quietly, reaching for her hand. “That counts for a lot.”

“No,” Lucretia says, clasping her hands at her waist. She looks away, all the ease and joy draining from her as she leans against her desk. “You are my employee, and. I think dinner is done, thank you, it was… it was delicious. This can’t happen again.”

“I mean it, though—”

“I’m quite sure you do, it’s just… it’s very, very inappropriate.”

“How is talking, how is— no one would call friendship inappropriate,” Magnus says emphatically. “You like, were naked in four feet of mud with Merle. How is that appropriate, but, but _I’m_ not?”

“I was under the impression that your designs are for more than just friendship,” Lucretia says after a moment.

“Well, yeah.”

Lucretia raises an eyebrow and gestures between them. “My point then.”

Magnus shakes his head, frustration welling up in him. “I, I told you. I _like_ you, I want to court you, and that’s… ever since, ever since my wife died, it’s, I thought it was over, no more, no one else. But, you… I met you and I feel like there’s, there’s a connection here. Or maybe it’s just potential, I dunno, but I feel something.”

Lucretia shakes her head, holding her hand to her chest like she’s been wounded. “Magnus, I, that’s… that’s all very flattering but you don’t _know_ me.”

“I want to,” Magnus says. “I was under the impression that you wanted to spend time with me too.”

She shakes her head harder. “No. No, no. Magnus.”

“Why not? I don’t understand, let me understand. I know I’m not the brightest—”

“I keep telling you three, please,” Lucretia says fiercely. “ _Stop_ selling yourselves short!”

“I ate a _rock_!”

“That _might_ not have been your most shining moment, but you have done things that no one else has ever— will ever accomplish!”

Magnus snorts. “I get it, you’re proud of us or whatever, but listen. We’re dumb as dirt, and that’s not really gonna change much. That’s just, that’s just what we are. We’re dumb, but it doesn’t stop us from helping.”

Lucretia shakes her head. “You’re _not_ ,” she insists.

Magnus stops for a second. “Why is that, of all the things, so important to you? Maybe if you tell me, I’ll get it. If you tell me why you don’t want me to try to be your friend, I’ll stop.”

“Magnus, no,” she says softly. She twists her fingers together, then balls up the fabric of her skirt in her fingers. “I… For years, I’ve been trying to, to corral the Relics. First me, and then the Bureau. And… nothing. Just, for so long, nothing. I did nothing of note.”

She wrings her hands tighter, popping her knuckles. “I looked into my lover’s eyes and I walked away from them to do what was right, and for so long, nothing came out of that. That’s why it matters, Magnus. You three have the ingenuity to do what I could not, magical pica be damned. And that’s why you should… you should let your… infatuation with me rest.”

She looks up at him and sets her jaw. “Because I have, and I will again, throw aside my creature comforts to do what I have to.”

Magnus watches her and her clenched hands and trembling jaw. He grins and reaches over and lays a hand over hers. “That, that’s just fine,” he says. “I can understand that, one-hundred percent.”

“That was supposed to be discouraging,” she whispers.

He laughs and shakes his head. “Didn’t you do any research on me? I’m stubborn, and yanno, revolutions aren’t exactly comfy cozy.”

“I strongly discourage you from doing this, Magnus,” Lucretia says. “Very. Wholeheartedly.”

“I don’t listen well,” he continues, leaning forward. He lifts his hand from her hands and tips her chin up with his knuckles. She flinches back slightly; he keeps still.

She doesn’t move— it doesn’t even seem like she’s breathing. She just stares at him, lips slightly parted. He lessens the space between them until his nose brushes against hers.

“Except now,” he says. “I’ll listen now.”

“That is, that’s very, that’s… very contrary,” she breathes, blinking quickly.

He can feel her lashes flick against his cheeks. He laughs softly. “That’s me,” he tells her. “Just say no if this isn’t okay, yeah? Tell me, I’ll understand.”

She’s silent; her eyes fall shut and her breath shudders out of her and fans against her face. There’s no sound, but he feels the word against his mouth, the ghost of a _please_ that feels like a second skin.

He closes the distance, kissing her as gently as he can. He keeps his knuckles under her chin, loosely curled, gentle. He wants to cup her face, tuck his thumbs under her ears and kiss her until she can’t breathe, can’t even speak, until they’re silly and stupid from it. But he knows better. She’s a skittish creature, and his heart is pounding so hard he thinks it might burst.

So for now, a soft press of their lips together, barely moist and barely there. But kissing her feels familiar, like a favorite shirt that’s been lost to the back of a closet, found and still soft, and she kisses back.

She kisses back with a light touch of her fingers to his wrist, right over the pulse, her neck craning back so that when he pulls away, she’s looking up at him without guidance from his hand.

“Do you still want me to leave?” he asks, tracing the line of her neck with a knuckle.

“… want and need are two separate entities,” Lucretia says softly. She curls her fingers around his wrist, moving his hand from her neck. She clasps his hand between both of her hands. “I still… Oh, Magnus, I shouldn’t have let you do that.”

Her fingers tighten around his hand as she shakes her head. “But I did, and I… yes, Magnus, please leave for the night before I do anything silly.”

“What’s silly, Madame?” he asks.

He turns his palm over hers, lifting her hand to his chest and holding it over his heart. She curls her fingers into the fabric and gently tugs him down.

Her kiss is harder than his— her mouth is turned down unhappily as she brings their lips together. The little frown eases as her lips part, and then is no more as she slides her tongue against his lips. He clutches her hand tight, then succumbs to the urge to hold her close. He splays one hand against the center of her back, pulling, trapping her hand between their chests.

His heart throbs under her touch, anxious and skipping and pounding as she takes his lip between hers. His head spins, and he leans harder into her, as malleable and fragile as clay underneath the attention of her touch.

She presses up into him, first with her mouth, then with the flat of her hand. “That,” she says when she pulls away, slick lipped and frowning once again. “That was.”

“I don’t think so.”

Lucretia sighs and shakes her head again. “You wouldn’t.”

“You shouldn’t.”

Lucretia makes a noise of protest, then laughs, reaching up to wipe under her eyes.

“You always have been like this, haven’t you?” she says with a fond sigh. “Magnus, this can only happen once, I’m telling you.”

“Then again,” he breathes, and she crumbles against the urge he knows she shares with him.

She lets him back her up against her desk, sit her on the edge, and cup her face between his palms, thumbs tracing the outline of her mouth.

“Once is an ongoing state right now,” he murmurs.

The way she laughs, the way she leans her cheek to his palm, is more intimate than any way he could have kissed her, so he doesn’t, not yet. He traces over her face, her hair, her mouth with his fingers instead, basking in the delight of the way she closes her eyes and sighs, shaky like she’s going to cry despite the smile on her mouth.

 _Just this once, just this once, no more after this_ , she whispers. But her hands are on his cheeks, in his hair, on the scar over his eye, on his hands, his neck, his back, digging in, _one more time, one more._

* * *

Magnus kisses her, and it feels like the implosion of a star. It could birth something new, or begin the end of everything, a black hole to consume her whole.

He’s kissing her and it feels like home. Her will crumbles beneath the gentle touch on her cheek, the firm hand on her back, the pressure of his lips on hers.

Home, home, her heart is home again—she sent him out, alone and unknowingly carrying her heart with him, and she was lonely for so long.

She reaches out and grasps his face, fingers curling into the wiry hair where his beard meets his sideburns and she kisses him like she’s nineteen all over again, young and hungry and desperately in love.

He holds her close, stepping closer, his hips pressing her knees open as he pulls her to the edge of her desk. She’s dizzy and gasping already, pulling him into kiss after kiss, hands in the thick curls of his hair and tugging.

He’s gentle, soft; he handles her with care and tenderness that makes her feel like she’s being savored, memorized.

He’s broader under her hands, his hands are rougher. She categorizes each change as his shirt comes off, all things she’s noticed before but she’d never allowed herself to linger on.

Scars, so many scars. He’s always been one to throw himself to the fray in search of a good fight when his energy was too much to bear, but these…

A tattoo of a soaring raven on his shoulder, burns from the forge. She touches it, and it’s like she’s been shocked.

She let her heart go, and she’s suffered for it, but Magnus…

He’d loved another woman, and… he’s always been a good man, but the changes Julia instilled in him… she’d loved him for half a century and could never spur him into more. But she let him go, and in that time, he found someone new to love with his entire soul, and Julia made him _better_.

Better than she ever did, than she ever could. Only death had separated Julia from Magnus, and she… She threw away everything for a greater good that’s left her hollow and grasping.

What change had she wrought in the world? What has she done, other than tear people apart? Merle abandoned his children, Taako is the worst of his bad days, and Magnus went through so much pain.

What has she done to deserve this comfort, to indulge herself in this?

This is not her Magnus, no matter how much she sees him in this man; this is Magnus, twisted by her hand, and smoothed into gentleness and tempered justice by the hands of another woman. This is not her Magnus; this is Magnus confused and befuddled and tugged by some bond that she’d failed to cut, a man she’s taking advantage of in her loneliness.

She withdraws, eyes suddenly burning.

She should have been stronger than this; she should have told him no. She shouldn’t have worried about being gentle with him, afraid that too harsh of a rebuke would turn him away forever. That he would remember her harshness when his memory returns and think poorly of her. That he would take the subtle hints of her love, and be satiated by them until the day when she could come back to him as she is, once he knows and remembers her and what she’s done.

But it’s too late and she was too lonely, and his hand turns her cheek towards him.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Are you okay?”

She swallows hard and nods, letting him tip her head up to his. He presses his forehead to hers, and she feels weak, shaking and feverish. She isn’t sure what’s the alcohol and what’s her own emotions, overwhelmed by the feel and smell of him.

His beard tickles her face as he speaks, thumbs smoothing over her cheeks. “I can go,” he promises. “Send me away, and I’ll go, and, and it won’t happen again. Just tell me.”

She cups her hand over his, curling her fingers around his.

“Lucretia…”

Her hand drops away, resting on her lap, then down to the edge of her desk.

His voice is a sigh, her name a plea. She hears the tight thread of longing in his voice, familiar. He’s begged for her so many times, worshiped her and needed her, and this time is no different.

“Lucretia.”

His fingers are so light as they trace down her neck, trembling with restraint. They find her pulse, the tendon in her neck, and she tips her head back, his nose pressed to her chin, his forehead on her cheek, breath hot on her skin. His lashes flutter against her cheek, and she floats, untethered in the feeling.

She is there, in her office, his hands sliding over her chest as she presses her breasts into his palms with a curl of her spine, lower body fitting firmer against his as she leans back onto her hands on her desk.

She is not there, but in a small alcove bed in her berth, the bond engine humming in her ears and Magnus’ mouth on her skin. She is in every year, every cycle, with him, at first silent and wanting, and later, together and loving. She is in her berth and he is on his knees, tears drying in his eyes before he even has the chance to cry.

She curls her hands around his shoulders, tipping her face to kiss him.

His fingers curl around her hips, pulling her as he steps forward, tugging her close while keeping her on the edge of her desk.

His tongue in her mouth, his hands around her hips, his beard—she drowns in the sensation of him.

She pulls his lip between her teeth and he groans as she drags back. She runs her hands up his neck, petting the nape of his neck in idle patterns as she kisses him.

She tries to ground herself in the moment—ten years alone, and she’s kissing Magnus again. But it feels like a dream.

He pulls back, reaching to run his knuckles to her cheek.

“Magnus,” she sighs softly.

He smiles and keeps his hand against her cheek, drinking her in.

“Magnus,” she says again.

“That’s me,” he says, voice low and hoarse.

Her heart seizes in her throat—how many times had she heard that joke before? How many times can an echo of a man sound through before she forgets that it isn’t really true?

He strokes her jaw and tips her face up, studying her. His eyes linger at her mouth, his teeth finding his bottom lip. She lowers her gaze, breath coming quick and heavy even despite her attempts to calm herself.

His heat radiates through her, his bare skin against the silk of her dress. Her fingers curl and uncurl, she smooths them across his shoulders, deliberately flat-palmed.

She looks up and meets his gaze. Her breath leaves her like a punch at the liquid intensity to his eyes, wide pupils and lowered lids, his face flushed.

The last thread of guilt snaps in her with a pang so harsh and sweet she could weep.

“Yes,” she breathes, the unasked question too much to bear. “Yes, please—one more—”

He laughs, breath warm on her lips and she surges forward, kissing him so hard their teeth crush against her lips, but she doesn’t care.

There will be consequences for this, but she doesn’t care. Surely, surely, surely Magnus will understand. Surely he will forgive.

Magnus laughs, then groans as she grips his hips with her thighs, tipping herself up closer to him, fingers tight in his hair.

He holds her to him with a hand on the small of her back, pressing, urging her closer. She can feel him against her inner thigh, and with a small shift, she presses them flush, his stiffening cock to her cunt through silk and cotton and a decade of loneliness.

He groans again and his fingers bunch into her dress against the base of her spine. His arms flex and he pulls back, but she follows him, kissing his chin, his cheeks. She kisses each lip separately, runs her tongue against them, meets his mouth as he presses forward into her.

Her hands drag down his back, then slide between them, up his stomach to his chest. She reaches up with one, cupping the back of his head. She rests the other over his heart, feeling it pound against her palm.

He twitches against her, stomach taut with effort of holding his hips steady. His sudden politeness is endearing, sweet—for all his muster and bluster, Magnus is ever the gentleman.

She aches for him, her heart, her skin, her everything. Every place he touches feels raw, febrile, skin too thin and new to bear the feather-light touches. He strokes her side, then draws back, panting and licking his lips.

“Lucretia,” he says, and she breathes out a quiet whine. He grins, something small and hungry.

She traces the shell of his ear slowly, watching as he jolts and groans as she rubs the lobe of his ear between her thumb and forefinger. She tugs, and finally, his hips snap forward, his brow furrowing as he drops his head to her neck.

She repeats the gesture, arching herself into the motion of his hips. She’s so wound tight that she could rub herself to climax against him just like this, like a teenager all over again, just like all their lazy mornings spun into one, but Magnus pushes away, chest heaving.

He runs a finger against her lips, then down her chin, drawing a line from her clavicle to the hem of her dress. He traces the vee of her collar, then down to the tie.

He presses his fingers against the knot of the tie, right underneath her breast, and his breath comes out as a shudder.

“Can… may I?”

Lucretia’s head spins and she swallows hard, pulse throbbing between her legs, anticipation sparking through her. Everything aches with it, her mouth, eyes— even her breasts, untouched but aching for him.

She nods and he tugs, pulling the tie with a jerk of his wrist.

Her dress falls open and he gives a small huff of satisfaction. He pauses for a second, just looking, mouth open slightly as he looks her up and down.

She wishes, suddenly, that she put more thought into her underwear, into her hair, her makeup— but Magnus grins and kisses her quickly.

“You’re gorgeous,” he whispers, peppering her with kiss after kiss. “I’m, I’m so lucky right now.”

She feels herself flush. “I, I’m not so sure about that,” she says, frowning.

“No, for real,” he assures her. He reaches up and cups her breasts, thumbs sweeping slow circles, pressing in. He drags the tip of his thumb over her nipples through the lace of her bra and she gasps.

“Gods, yeah,” he murmurs, mostly to himself. He repeats the motion, this time with just the very tip of his thumbnails, and she cries out. “Most definitely. Lucretia…”

He squeezes her gently, then reaches around, unhooking her bra. She shifts back, shrugging off both the fabric of her dress and her bra before gripping his biceps, squeezing tight as he puts his hands back on her breasts.

He kisses her neck, and she tips her head back, whimpering as he mouths her neck while he fondles her breasts. He rubs her already hard nipples, slow circles that make her squirm and curl her toes as the stimulation tickles the arousal between her legs.

She digs her nails in as he gingerly pinches both nipples, then rubs them between his thumb and forefinger, movements matched, but slightly out of sync.

She jerks her hips forward against his, scratching down his arms.

He exhales sharply, then drops to his knees so quickly it makes Lucretia’s head spin.

He spreads his palms against the insides of her thighs and she moans. Magnus hooks his fingers into her underwear and tugs them down. She shakes and spreads her legs without guidance.

She wriggles, trying to cast them off without kicking Magnus in the face. It’s a harder endeavor than she remembered, and they both laugh as her panties go flying, landing atop the picnic basket.

“Magnus, you don’t have to,” she says, her voice tight with anticipation as he settles back onto his knees.

He kisses her knee gently, shaking his head. “I want to,” he promises.

He kisses up her thigh, his hands firm on her hips.

“Besides,” he whispers, pulling one hand down her thigh. He adjusts it over his shoulder, then walks his fingers up her leg. He taps the inner tendon of her thigh and Lucretia lifts her hips, palms pressing into her desk. “Who could turn down dessert?”

“You’re awfu— _oh_!”

Magnus runs his finger between her lips, parting her further. As he spreads her open, the cool air on her skin shocks her, making her suddenly aware of just how truly aroused she is.

His fingers slide against her easily, tracing lazy up and down patterns from her clit to her entrance, and she jerks into the touch. He presses his thumb to her clit, then rubs, and she curls her fingers against her desk, scraping at her blotter.

She’s on the cusp of begging him, of crying out for more, when he puts his mouth on her. She pushes up against his mouth without pretense or shame.

It’s been so long, too long. The tickle of his facial hair, the rhythm of his tongue, the hot pressure of his mouth on her— nothing ever came close to this.

She curls her fingers into his hair and pushes him closer, already fucking herself against his face as he licks a stripe across her. Her voice comes out high and sharp with each sweep of her tongue.

He pulls her closer to him, and she digs her heel against the floor, her other foot on Magnus’ shoulder.

She screws her eyes shut tight, toes curling and body burning. She’s so close, she’s dizzy, burning, and she’s so close. She feels herself start to climb the precipice of orgasm, each rock of her body pushing harder against him, muscles tight as she clenches around herself.

She tries to stave it off, but Magnus presses a finger inside of her, thick and long and he crooks it against a spot that makes her see stars. It builds and builds like a cresting wave, the kind that flood towns, that pull the tide out to meet them.

She hears her voice as if it were separate from her, high and breathy, sucking in air with desperate pleas. Magnus smiles against her and presses himself closer as she bucks up against him, humming a soothing noise against her that makes her twist her head to her shoulder and tug his hair in her fists.

She feels the shudder that runs through him, the way his mouth falls slack as he moans, the twitch of his fingers both on her hip and within her. She does it again, and his nails bite into the softness of her thigh, hand moving to press her open wider. He presses two fingers inside of her now, knuckle deep and he twists them, then beckons against that spot within her.

She cries out sharply, and he presses down on it again as he seals his lips around her clit and sucks.

She jolts and pushes up against him, stomach seizing and thighs tensing as she comes against his fingers, his mouth, eyes screwed shut and lungs barely working.

He eases her through it, stroking her slowly, slick lips pressed to her stomach. She pants and lets the slow aftershocks roll through her, removing her hands from his hair to brace against her desk.

Slowly, she comes back to focus. His chin rests on her pubic mound, his breath hot on her stomach; he strokes her still, slow and shallow, and a tremble of need rises in her belly.

She looks down and finds him with glistening lips and an enraptured expression on his face. She smiles and sighs, fondness making a soft fool of her.

She lifts one hand and beckons him up. He rises, leans over her, and kisses her, lifting her up against his chest. She tastes herself on him, thick and musky and a bit sour and groans into his mouth. He rocks his hips to her, and she gently shoves at him, the fabric of his pants too much on her sensitive skin.

“How do you still have _pants_?” she chides. “Mister _I’m gonna whip my dick out during a debriefing_ Burnsides.”

“...Isn’t that what debriefing means?”

His voice is raw as he grins at her, and she can’t bear it. She reaches out and gently undoes the laces to his pants and pushes them down.

“In this case, yes,” she murmurs, taking him in hand and stroking slowly.

He shudders and grips her hips tightly. “Lucretia,” he breathes. His mouth falls slack and he moans as she runs her thumb against the base of him.

It’s not fair, she realizes, that she knows every inch of him and he can only guess at what she likes. It’s not fair, but that’s how it is, so she hooks her ankles behind his thighs and guides him to her.

“Like this,” she whispers.

Magnus’ brows furrow and he pauses, even as he twitches in her palm. “Are you… you’re sure?” he asks, voice cracking.

She arches her brow at him, affixing him with as stern of a look as she can. “Yes, Magnus,” she says gently.

And this, this is even more than before, as he slowly breaches her with gentle, shallow thrusts. The stretch burns in a way that makes her curl against him and cry out for more, and then he slides in deep, and she could come just from that, and then he draws back.

He cups her shoulders, her hips, his hands roaming for a place to rest as he presses back in. He starts a slow, steady rhythm that has her nails in his back, her mouth on his throat; a hand grasps her ass and he speeds up just a little, still tender, still slow.

Her name spills from him and she drops a hand to her clit, because she can’t bear it, she needs to come, needs to come with him inside of her, with him crying for her and his nails blunt against her skin.

She thinks better of it and takes his hand from her hip and guides him to her.

She presses two fingers of his fingers to herself, lacing her fingers through his, and lets them rest. He thrusts harder, jolting her and it wells up in her with the desperate crack to his voice, the press of him inside of her, the sound of their flesh and fluids and voices.

“ _Lucy—_ ”

And that’s all it takes for her.

She presses herself close, rocking against him as she comes, her fingers scraping against the back of his hand.

Her voice is swallowed by the tightness in her throat, even as she tries to form his name, to echo the desperate cry in her heart that begs for him, needs more as she spasms around him.

Once upon a time, she could go again, and he would coax more and more from her, but as she comes down, she finds it’s too much too soon. She pulls his hand from her and presses his sticky fingers to her cheek, hand tight at his wrist.

The feeling of him in her is too much, especially as he stills— she could laugh, he’s looking at her with wide eyes and parted lips.

But she’s all too aware this could never happen again, that he could be gone in the morning, that he could be gone next month, next year, forever.

She reaches out and loops her arms around his neck, arching her body just so.

His eyes drop to her chest, then between them; she feels him twitch within her and she rolls her hips against him.

Her entire body trembles with it, the pleasure-pain of overstimulation as he thrusts slowly into her, hands spreading across her back to hold her close. She presses as close as she can, urging him down against her body.

She kisses his face, his ears, his jaw, his nose. Over the scar that bisects his eyebrow, against the nick on his lower lip. His pulse, his throat, everywhere she can reach, tasting the salt and sweat of him. This part of it hasn’t changed— his face contorts and he clenches his jaw, shaking.

“Magnus,” she whispers, finally finding her voice between her quiet gasps. “Magnus, please.”

He shakes his head and drops his forehead to hers, eyes closed tight as he pants. “Not yet,” he says, voice breaking with desperation. “I want— there’s more I want to—”

Her heart overflows, cracking and breaking as he twitches and jerks against her. She pets the nape of his neck slowly.

“It’s okay,” she promises. She kisses him gently, knowing it betrays all the softness and tenderness she feels for him. “Later, we can— you can.”

Magnus kisses her again, opened mouthed and panting. “Lucretia… Lucy... I—”

She rocks up against him, rolling her hips in a slow rhythm and he groans, snapping his hips to meet her.

“Yes,” she breathes, voice cracking as he draws back and thrusts in, harder than he has all night. It overwhelms her as he picks up the pace, until she’s gasping with it, and then he moans, loud in her ear as he jerks away, coming against the inside of her thigh.

As sensitive as she was, the sudden emptiness makes her ache. She longs for him to slide back into her, to keep him as intimately close as possible.

She keeps her arms wrapped around him as his breathing slowly steadies.

He draws back and inhales sharply, mouth falling open.

“Uh,” he says, face flushing crimson. “Hi.”

She laughs, then hiccups, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh, Magnus,” she says, blinking. “You—hello to you, too.”

He rubs his thumb against her cheek. “Are you alright?”

She nods and slowly slides from her desk, bracing herself against Magnus as her legs wobble.

“Very,” she says, laying her head against her chest. “Now, if you promise to keep your eyes closed, I… I can take you back to my room and… and we… we can discuss the ah… other courses of action you, you wanted to take? Maybe while…uh…”

“Yes, I’ll cuddle with you,” Magnus says, dropping a kiss to her forehead. “Just once, yes?”

She nods, and brings her hand up to wipe away another tear. “It’s an ongoing thing,” she says archly, chest bursting with love for this man who looks at her like she’s hung the entire universe instead of just the moon.

This hurts, loving him hurts, wanting him hurts, kissing him, holding him, crawling atop him and holding on hurts, but just once, just this one time, she grants herself this one reprieve.


	3. Summer Haze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops. This is gonna take a little longer than I'd anticipated.

Once turns to twice turns to Magnus slipping into Lucretia’s office whenever it’s unlocked.

It’s unlocked often, these days; sometimes it’s during the day, sometimes it’s unlocked at night. Sometimes they meet in the hallway, on the quad, on the training field.

Once, it seems, was not enough for either of them. That’s just fine as far as Magnus is concerned—he’ll keep showing up for lunch, dinner, whatever, as long as Lucretia’ll continue to see him. 

Taako rolls his eyes with each new recipe request and bitches incessantly about it, but recipes always seem to pop up just when he needs them. Magnus knows he’s a bit bitter about losing the bet with Carey on whether or not he’d actually be invited back after the first date.

(He’s glad that neither of them have commented on his absences at the breakfast table as of late. Or the Director’s, for that matter. Or either of them, being missing, at the same time.)

Tonight is a mushroom risotto that Magnus hopes she enjoys. He’s been guessing at what she likes, and so far, he’s only messed up once, with a butternut squash soup that looked like it nauseated her to even be near.

She’d offered to tell him her favorites, but he enjoys guessing, getting to know her through food just as he’s been getting to know her with his hands and mouth.

He slips into her office and finds her with her face in her hands.

“Oh, hey, uh, is this a bad time?”

“What? Oh, Magnus, hello,” she says faintly. She looks up, blinking at him in the sort of way that makes Magnus feel like she’s barely registering his presence at all.

“Is this a bad time?” he repeats.

“Oh, I mean… sort of. Maybe? We’ve gotten another tip about a Relic, so I’m sorting through papers…Maps, charts, that sort of thing.”

“Nice. That’s number five, right. Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

Magnus grins and throws his head back, pretending to be oblivious to the frown carved across her face and the dark circles under her eyes.

“ _WOAAAAH we’re halfway there, WOAAA-OH—_ ”

“No fantasy Bon Jovi in my office! Mag _—_ Magnus, this is serious, you could, _gods_. All of you could die.”

“Nah, we’re good. C’mon and eat, you look like you need a break, Lucretia. I brought risotto, that sound good?”

“I mean it, Magnus,” Lucretia says sternly. “I—I need you to take this seriously. Please. I’m, I’m begging you to take this seriously.”

“I promise, we totally won’t die—like, it goes, uh… _WE’LL MAKE IT I SWEAR,”_ he sings, then holds an empty fist out to her like passing her a mic.

“ _Woah-oh, livin’ on a_ — get out of my office,” she says.

He’d be hurt, but she’s laughing, eyes crinkled as she grins. She waves her hand at him, pursing her lips as she tries to keep herself serious. 

“Go. Shoo. I’m brooding, and it’s important I do it undisturbed. I can’t be swayed by good looks and rustic, rustic whatever it is you do. Flirting.”

“At least you’re honest about it,” Magnus laughs. “You sure you don’t want company?”

Her face softens, but she shakes her head, looking sad.

He knows, even without asking, that she needs to be alone, but sometimes, it’s the thought that counts. Already, she doesn’t look quite as hopeless, her shoulders are a little straighter, her face softer with a hint of that playful smile he’s come to adore.

“I… I have to start planning logistics. I’m sorry, Magnus. I’d… I would like it if you could stay,” she says gently. “But this… this precedes everything.”

She pauses for a moment. “But leave the risotto? Please?”

“Cool, yeah, please eat it,” he says, gently putting the enamel pan on the least cluttered spot on her desk. “Need that uh, Dutch?? Oven? Thingy back, it’s Taako’s and he threatened to dye my hair chartreuse. I don’t know what chartreuse _is_.”

“I will most _certainly_ return it, then. It would be… well, unflattering, at best. I think your natural color is, well. Nice.”

He leans over her desk and cups her cheek, amused at the way she bites her lip and looks away. He runs his hand fondly through her hair, then presses a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Hey. Don’t overwork yourself,” he says. “Even though I know you will—don’t.”

“I’ll do my best. Thank you, Magnus,” she says. “I… well. I hope you know that I… I do enjoy it when you’re around. I just, I need to focus, and… that’s hard to do when you’re around. Very… hard, _uh_.”

Magnus chuckles as Lucretia looks downwards briefly. He knocks his knuckles against her desk. “I get it,” he says.

He kisses her forehead again, then laughs as she huffs slightly, rising from her chair to press a proper kiss to his mouth. 

“Alrighty then,” he says gently, backing up towards the door. “Do good work.”

He lingers for a moment in the corridor outsider her office. He listens for the scratch of her quill, the rustle of paper, expecting her to promptly return to work. Instead he hears the distinct glee in her voice as she opens up the pan.

“Fuck yeah, risotto!”

He snorts and leans into her doorway. “Really?”

Lucretia looks up, lips pursed. “I thought you left.”

“I am, I did, I’m gone.”

“Goodnight, Magnus.”

“Goodnight, Lucretia.”

Her smile is soft, almost sad as she shakes her head.

* * *

They go to Refuge. They die.

They die, and then die some more. He comes back feeling scooped out and hollow, his mind a wash of bright white light and static and the sound of Julia’s voice overlaid with a goddess’.

_You’re going to be amazing._

But what if he’d been something else, before that? What if all that time that June-the-Relic had found _meant_ something?

_Who-who told you that?_

If the Red Robes weren’t the bad guys, who were they?

Who was _he_? Where does _he_ fit into all of this?

The statue, the tube, June, the cup, the Red Robe, and the Bureau: they’re all a part of some larger pattern, but what shape does it make?

* * *

His entire body prickles, his mind the static hum of a stone on the wrong frequency, of a spell gone wrong, of the tingling wrongness he felt when he stepped onto the moonbase for the first time.

It’s late, it’s so late, but he succumbs to defeat after approximately five minutes of trying to settle; it won’t happen, he can’t calm down.

Normally he sleeps well after a mission, but he’d went and opened that scroll on top of everything else, and now he’s like a live wire.

His mind is buzzing, his hands tingling with electricity. The scroll stuffed under his bed seems to sing to him, and with his eyes closed, it sounds like the quiet song of the Voidfish when it’s being fed.

He slides out of bed and creeps into the dark hallway outside of their dorms. The emergency lights blink on as they detect movement in the hall, a slow tide of light washing the hallway as he walks.

The flickering lights travel with him as he winds up the levels of stairs that takes him to the maintenance entrance to the main dome. He knows Merle is surely out on the quad, so he ducks into the thin hallway, just wide enough for one caddy’s worth of cleaning supplies or mechanical odds and ends and starts counting doors.

(Lucretia had taught him the trick, smirking slyly in that way of hers, waggling her eyebrows as they ducked away from a group of Seekers.)

She’s always been part playful, part fearfully serious, and he adores it. Even when she was…

His mind slips, fuzzes out, and he leans against the wall. He presses his forehead to the wall, feeling its coolness seep through him. He needs to not think, he needs to be blank until the fuzziness passes.

Lucretia. He’s going to go visit Lucretia. He focuses on thoughts of her, of his hands on her skin, her cool fingers and soft laugh.

Lucretia, not the half-feral skittering static that pulses behind his eyes. Her, now, not in past tense. He lets the idea of her, steady and commanding, pull him like a siren’s call.

Slowly, the world rights itself, and he pushes off the wall and walks out from behind the concealed hallway, right in front of Lucretia’s office. The door is closed, but he puts a hand on the knob and turns.

His heart seizes. It’s locked. Of course it is. It’s so late, there’s no way that she would… Surely she’s asleep, not working. He grips the knob tightly, falling into the sinkhole of panic in the back of his mind.

Static, emptiness—he needs _someone_. But she’s not there, just like Julia isn’t here anymore.

The door opens up beneath his hand, and there she is, hair damp and pinned back, lip between her teeth. She clutches her bathrobe to her chest, and he laughs. It’s white, ungodly fuzzy, and covered with ducks.

“Oops, did I interrupt bathtime?”

“And made me bust a spell slot teleporting here to get to the door in time,” she complains. “You’re lucky that I, I uh… Well. Come in.”

“Were you waiting on me?” he asks, affection making his voice hoarse.

“I... hoped you would come to see me, I just wasn’t sure,” she says, studying his face. She reaches up and lays a hand on his cheek. It’s damp and warm, smelling like lemons; he thinks of the oil she tipped into his cracked hands once, knowing that beneath the robe she’s just as warm and slick as her fingers. Heat bubbles up in his gut, overshadowing the unsteadiness that had brought him to her door.

“Magnus,” she says gently. “Are you all right? You look… you look unwell.”

He covers her hand with his and steps into her office. He nudges the door shut with his foot, hands going to her waist. He presses his lips to her temple and swings her in a slow circle.

“The cup, yanno,” he starts slowly.

“The Temporal Chalice.”

“Yeah, okay.”

She snorts against his neck. He grabs her hand.

“It showed me my wife,” he says. “Said I could have Julia back.”

Lucretia starts violently, stepping back like she’d been struck. He holds tight to her.

“I didn’t,” he says. “I didn’t take it. Obviously.”

“It… god, I said it earlier, but that sounds _fucking awful_ ,” she whispers. “I… I am so proud of you.”

Magnus thinks of the Red Robe, and the echo of his own words: _I’m really proud of you_.

Why? Why do they sound the same?

His mind lurches, trips, falls sideways. He tugs her close again, cups her body up against his, relishing in the warmth and solidness of her.

“I don’t know if I could… if I could do the same,” she says, shaking her head. “Honestly, I, here I am, chastising you three, and all the others, about the Relics, but if I… if I were in your shoes, I don’t know if I could resist.”

“It… it said it was a choice,” Magnus says. He rocks her into his arms. “And I chose, because… Julia wouldn’t want it and, she, she wouldn’t have been _my_ Julia.”

He studies Lucretia’s face, twisted deep with pain. She looks down, avoiding his eyes, her own shining bright.

“But also… how lonely would you have been, then? If I had chosen?”

Lucretia trembles in his arms, then bites her lip. Her voice is quiet, a little shaky: “ _We've gotta hold on to what we've got; it doesn't make a difference if we make it or not_ —”

Magnus laughs, so loud it echoes through the room. He picks her up off of her feet, holding her so she’s looking down at him as she laughs, eyes wide and hair tumbling from its pins. “I thought you said no Fantasy Bon Jovi!”

“You— you already died, it sounds like, so,” she says, laughing as a flush rises to her cheeks. “Magnus, put me down, my robe—!”

“It’s coming open tonight anyway, Madame,” he says, spinning them.

“ _We've got each other and that's a lot!_ ” he sings, hoisting her over his shoulder as she squawks indignantly.

He feels like himself with her in his arms, whoever that is.

* * *

Magnus hadn’t exactly _planned_ on taking dinner to Lucretia, not yet—she’s been acting weird lately, and he’s unsure of whether or not she really _wants_ his company.

But Taako had shoved him into the kitchen, handed him a bowl full of tomatoes and a knife and loudly slammed a bottle of wine onto the counter. _“Ease that stick out of the Director’s ass, wouldya? And yours.”_

And that’s how he finds himself with a fully stocked basket, making the familiar trek to Lucretia’s office despite the buzzing behind his eyes.

He’s almost afraid of how the night will go; will he be sent away without explanation or will he spend the night?

If he does, maybe he’ll sleep. The last time he slept a full night was the night he interrupted her bath; if she lets him stay, maybe he won’t dream of Julia, burning, waving him goodbye, asking him questions he can’t answer, her voice a wash of static, red-wreathed skeletons, _Are you afraid?_ Because, yes, now he is afraid; afraid of losing, afraid of knowing what the scroll means, of why he needs to be protected.

Lucretia’s been busy, harried, and cold ever since Refuge. Her door has been locked each time he’s gone to see her, and no amount of bracer waving, knob jiggling, lock picking, or just plain knocking has coaxed the door open. It’s like he never stumbled into her room at all, much less sang Fantasy Bon Jovi at her, with her laughing in his arms. Much less kissed her, slid that robe off of her body and laid her down in her quarters.

It’s like everything that happened between them was a dream, or worse—a memory fed to the Voidfish, with no evidence to prove that it was even real in the first place.

Each morning, Killian drags them to the dojo. Each morning, Lucretia kicks their asses, or directs the training robots to do it for her. She’s not herself, she’s not even the Director—she is some stern-masked drill instructor explaining the gruesome ways they would be torn apart in battle if they were real.

He goes after her, each morning, looking for the woman he’d kissed before Refuge. He knows she’s there— did she get into trouble? Is she sick? Is she worried? Does she hate him? Does she know what rests under his bed? Did he do something that night?

Was his singing really _that_ terrible? (Did he hurt her in his need to be close to her?)

The sudden change in demeanor confuses him, hurts him more than an outright refusal would, but he can’t bring himself to stop trying to see her, especially not with such a good excuse in his hands. 

He knocks, tentatively, on her office door. There’s silence and Magnus steps back and slides his basket from his arm to leave at her door.

He’s tired and sore, and he doesn’t feel like waiting behind a locked door for hours with the hope that she’ll appear. He sighs and turns his back on her office, starting down the hall.

“Magnus?”

He turns, meeting Lucretia as she steps out of the dais room. She holds her white oak staff between her fingers, looking startled to find him in her hallway.

“What are you doing here?”

Magnus shrugs. “I was hoping to catch you,” he says gently. “I brought food.”

Lucretia licks her lips nervously, then nods. “You have wonderful timing, actually. I missed dinner to meet with one of our agents on the ground.”

“And what did they have to say?” Magnus asks, scooping the basket up off of the floor. He places a hand on her back as she unlocks the door to her office. She leans into the touch and closes her eyes with a sigh.

“Nothing conclusive.”

The door closes behind them and she breaks away, moving to put her staff on her desk. He watches her idly run her finger across the grain before she turns and leans on her desk to study him.

“Have you been coming by every day?” she asks softly.

“You know I have,” he answers. “Just… this is the first day with food, uh. So lucky catch.”

“Oh, Magnus,” she sighs.

He holds out his hand and shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. Just… let’s eat first?” he asks.

She smiles and nods. She reaches for her wand, and with a quick flick of her wrist, their usual blanket and pillows settle to the floor.

“What have you got for me today?” she asks, nudging her pillow closer to Magnus’ with her foot before settling down into it.

“Bruschetta, since it’s getting warm, some salad, and a bottle of Chardonnay, courtesy of Taako,” Magnus says, unpacking the basket.

“Oh, wow that is a… that’s a very large bottle,” Lucretia laughs as Magnus unearths the family-sized bottle of wine from the bottom of the basket. She plucks it up and studies the bottle. “No cork. Fantasy Costco branded. Wow, boy. Please don’t taste like paint thinner.”

“He wouldn’t,” Magnus murmurs, watching as Lucretia undoes the top of the bottle. He hands her the glasses, kept frosty by some magic that Magnus has never asked about.

Lucretia fills each glass to the brim. “He might,” she says, lifting her precariously full glass. “Cheers to cheap wine.”

“Cheers,” Magnus chuckles. They sip in unison, then Lucretia makes a face, shrugs, and takes another sip.

“Not bad, for the Fantasy Costco brand.”

Magnus leans forward and picks up the loaf of bread, cutting it onto a plate. “Well, that’s that,” he laughs.

“Indeed,” Lucretia murmurs, sipping her wine as Magnus doles out food for them both.

They eat in silence.

Lucretia is seemingly comfortable with it, knocking her knee playfully against Magnus’ a few times. Magnus, however, squirms with the awkwardness of the questions that well up within him and stick in his throat.

He sets down his glass of wine and sighs. “Can I… can I ask you something?”

Lucretia nods, swallowing her bite of salad. “Yes?”

Magnus pushes his own food around his plate, then sighs. “You’ve been… very distant. Cold, even. I know we’re not the greatest on the field but, you’re… all this training, not staying to talk…But, you’re… right now, you’re back to-to flirting. What’s up with that?”

“Oh.” She sets her plate down and reaches for her wine. “Magnus, I…”

“Woah, slow down there,” Magnus laughs as she drains the entire glass in one go. “Jeezy creezy there, Lucretia.”

“I wish I could,” she says mournfully. She pours herself another glass. “I’m pushing you three too hard, I know, but… We’re running out of time to be idle. I… I’d kind of hoped you hadn’t noticed I’ve not been around.”

Magnus takes a sip of his own wine. “I wasn’t aware that what we were doing had a time constraint.”

“Everything has a time constraint, Magnus,” she sighs. “It’s just that, we are so close to being done and surely you realize by now that we are… observed.”

“The Red Robe,” Magnus says carefully. His mind blurs, trips sideways as he thinks of the statue, of himself in a… red robe? He takes another sip of wine.

“Well… yes and no.” Lucretia knocks back half of her glass. “There are other things that can watch us. As you discovered, the dead. The figures in the ethereal plane. Whatever force fire blasted letters onto my cafeteria. The force that blacked out my entire base last Solstice. The list, Magnus, is long.”

“So you want to finish up this shindig before we’re found?”

“We were already found,” Lucretia says flatly. “It’s before they act.”

She swirls her glass thoughtfully, and murmurs to herself. “I, also, would like to see my family again.”

“I thought you said they were dead.”

“Lost isn’t the same as dead, not always,” Lucretia sighs. “Just once, I… I miss them. They were brilliant and I…In any case, I’ve been too… I know I have, but you three… what we haven’t found yet is not because of any failures on my part with the Bureau, but instead because the items we seek are so powerful… And their wielders, surely, are crafty, to elude my Seekers. I very, very much want you three to live, Magnus. But I’m… I am afraid for you.”

Magnus shifts uncomfortably. Lucretia tops her glass off and sets it aside, nibbling on the edge of a slice of toast.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her mouth full. “I also… I’m afraid I don’t know how to treat you, either, publicly. When there’s… a mission. It’s… difficult.”

“Oh,” Magnus breathes, face flushing. “The… the kissing and the uh, uh… _you know._ ”

Lucretia laughs. “Yes. But also, all that… all that dying you three did, Magnus. I don’t want to, I don’t want to push too hard. I just, I don’t know what to do with you,” she says balefully. “ _About_ you.”

Magnus drains his cup, face and neck hot. He looks at his cup, his hands, the blanket they sit on, the marble floor of her office— anywhere but her. “Oh, uh. You can. You can forget that, if you want to. If it, if it’s been bothering you.”

A piece of bread hits him on the cheek. He looks over and finds Lucretia tearing off another piece. She flicks it straight at him.

“It’s been bothering me, yes, but because you went off, and— and died, idiot,” she says angrily. She throws another piece at him. “And because you still _can_ die, and I, I would be the one who put you up to it.”

“Hey,” Magnus says. He catches her hand as she goes to throw another chunk at him.

“And I’m your boss, I was supposed to be stronger than to… just… fall whim to persistent flirting. But I did, and I, I still... ”

“It’s because I’m rustically hospitable. And my balls were _amazing_.”

“Ugh!” Lucretia’s face scrunches up and then she dissolves into laughter. “Is that what you call it?”

“Well, yeah, no one can resist my charms,” he says. Lucretia stretches her fingers out and laces them through Magnus’. “Oh.”

Lucretia leans over and rests her cheek to his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Magnus,” she whispers. “I shouldn’t…Not knowing, not knowing what comes next, what I’ll have to send you out to face, I shouldn’t.”

“Why not?” he asks. “You keep saying that, and you still keep on…”

Lucretia shrugs and turns her face to his neck. He runs his fingers against the exposed line of her elbow, drawing a shiver from her.

He feels greedy, hungry. He runs his thumb in a circle against the inside of her elbow.

“I’m your boss,” she repeats. “I should have kept that paramount.”

“You’re plenty bossy still, next.”

“I’m older than you.”

“Cougars exist. Next.”

Lucretia snorts and leans back, surveying him with mischievous wonder. “I send you into danger,” she says. “Refute that, I dare you.”

“I find danger all on my own,” he says, tapping her nose. “Last night, I went on a jog and saw Garfield in his fantasy pajamas. I saw my life flash before my eyes—he was wearing flamingo slippers. I thought he’d kill me.”

A laugh bubbles out of her, loud and clear and heat swoops into Magnus’ belly.

“Are you—you’re goofing,” she laughs.

“Swear to Pan. Next reason.”

Lucretia bites her lip. “I have trust problems—problems _I_ created.”

“We all do,” he says gently. “And I figured that one out already. Next.”

“I eat pineapple on my Fantasy Dominos.”

“...Disgusting,” Magnus says lightly. “But you do you, whatever.”

“I banned fantasy Bon Jovi in my office,” she offers.

“It was because my singing is awful,” Magnus replies somberly.

“I liked your singing,” Lucretia laughs, covering her mouth as she swears. “Dammit, you got me.”

He leans forward and kisses her hand where it rests over her lips. “I do.”

She reaches out and lays her hand on his cheek, then pats it softly. “Let’s finish this food, huh?” she whispers. “I know you have dessert in there.”

Magnus laughs. “What, you want dessert more than a frank discussion of feelings?”

Lucretia looks him dead in the eye. “Yes.”

He grins and breaks away from her to hoist a tray of cupcakes out of the basket.

“I love that fucking magic basket,” she says, picking up her wine glass.

“It’s me who made them!”

Lucretia shrugs and takes a long sip of her drink. “Doesn’t mean anything if they didn’t fit in the basket.”

Magnus rolls his eyes and hands her a cupcake.

They make short work of dessert, and a good half of the bottle of wine.

Lucretia watches as he finishes off his last cupcake, blinking as he licks the frosting from his fingers. Once he’s done, she lets herself fall into his side.

“I do believe that I’m rather drunk,” Lucretia declares wondrously. She blinks at her empty wineglass and then grins easily at Magnus. “I don’t remember the last time I was drunk.”

Magnus laughs and reaches over her for the wine. “Well, it’s time for you to be cut off, then, Madame.”

She grabs his hand and holds it tightly. “But you’ll leave then,” she whispers. She shakes her head. “And that won’t do.”

Magnus rubs his thumb against her knuckles, carefully watching the way Lucretia smiles at him, the way her body curves as she presses up against him. “I can stay,” he offers.

“You’ll eventually have to leave,” Lucretia counters. She shrugs and swallows and eyes their hands. “And it’s probably best you do…practice in the morning…”

“But?”

Lucretia looks at him and shrugs. “There’s not one.”

“I heard one,” he prompts, lifting her knuckles to his mouth.

Her mouth falls open just slightly as he kisses each knob of bone on her thin hand, feeling the tightening of her muscles as she grips his hand tightly. “I’ll leave if you need,” he whispers to the back of her hand, keeping eye contact with her through his lashes.

Lucretia’s breath stutters; it sounds like a soft gasp twisting from her throat. Her chest shudders with it and her eyes fall shut like she’s physically in pain. “No,” she says. “It’s… it’s very lonely when you do.”

“I’ll stay then,” he tells her. “Don’t look so sad.”

Her mouth trembles. “I can’t help it.”

He cups her cheek and leans in. “I’m here,” he whispers against her mouth.

When he kisses her, it’s no longer the quick chaste thing he’d been planning on giving her. Her body leans into him and he lets go of her hand to hold her face with both palms. Her arms go to his chest, then his shoulders.

When he pulls away, she follows, and they come back together, again and again, her weight in his lap and her arms around his neck and his hand on the small of her back.

She curls against him, nestling herself against his chest, her chin tucked against his collar. He lays his chin against her head, marveling at the curl of her legs over his lap. She’s coiled up as small as she can against him, her dress bunched and wrinkled and wadded up under her knees.

“For how long?” she says against his neck. “How long are you here for?”

“Until you send me away,” Magnus answers, kissing the crown of her head. He skims his fingers against her calf, catching the hem of her dress. She shifts her foot, and he touches skin. “But I’ll come back after that. And again, and again.”

“And if you can’t? What happens then?”

“Well,” Magnus says slowly. “I don’t really _want_ to die. I… to tell the truth, I used to, but…”

Lucretia leans back, horror and grief naked on her face. “No,” she whispers, cupping his face. “Gods, Magnus, no, I— _no._ ”

He cups the back of her head with one hand, the other sliding up her thigh underneath her skirt. He pulls her forward and kisses her, opening her mouth with his own. She shifts under his touch, meeting his tongue with hers, her hands fisting his hair with slim fingers.

She leans up onto her knees, straddling him properly. He drops the hand from her hair, both hands curling around her hips.

“I said ‘used to’,” he protests between kisses.

“No,” she repeats. “You’re too… if you— I couldn’t, Magnus, no.”

His head spins as she kisses him, alcohol and the warm softness of her skin under his hand. He rubs his thumb slowly against her hip, catching the feel of the lacy hem of her underwear. Just that alone makes him feel slow, stupid with want and need and she keeps kissing him. Her body arcs against his, her hips, her belly, her breasts pressing fully against him.

It’s excruciating how much he missed this in just a few weeks of being without her.

“You, you make it sound like you love me or something,” he says, his voice hoarse in his throat.

Lucretia kisses him roughly, mouth bruising against his own, their teeth mashing with the fierceness of it. Her hands drag from his hair to his cheeks, fingers tipping his face up to hers.

“I, of course I, I’ve alw… I, longer than you realize, Magnus, I’ve always been fond of you,” she breathes. “I would have been devastated if you…”

“You wouldn’t have met me,” he says gently. He thumbs the hem of her panties again, both hands now under the hem of her skirt. “Nothing to miss, then.”

Lucretia shakes her head, peppering his mouth with quick kisses. Tears well up and drip from her chin to his neck. “That on its own, is… in its own way, I—”

“I’m here,” he whispers, pressing his nose to hers.

She turns her head just so, brushing their lips together. “Don’t… don’t promise me anything,” she says.

“I’m here,” he repeats. “Right now, I’m here. And barring any unfortunate accidents, I’ll be here tomorrow, right when you wake up.”

He kisses her before she has a chance to refute him. She sighs through her nose and leans into him, mouth opening up against his. He runs his hands up from her hips, up her sides, her dress pooling around the crook of his elbows.

She leans back on her knees and lifts her dress over her head, tossing it back behind herself before Magnus can even figure how she got it off so easily. And then she’s back to kissing him, her weight heavy on his thighs.

She curls her fingers into his sideburns, taking his lip between her teeth and dragging back slowly. It lights his body up like lightening, sharp and bright and explosively hot. He smolders from it, hands grasping at her as she repeats the motion each time they draw back from a kiss.

He pants against her mouth, and she pecks him chastely. She cups the back of his head, tracing the shell of his ear with her thumb, and _oh,_ how easily he forgets how sensitive the back of his ears are, just how intimate it is when she touches him so gently.

He cups her breasts, thumbs sweeping over the lace of her bra, feeling the sheerness of the fabric. Her nipples press against his thumbs as he circles them through the unlined lace. Lucretia’s breath hitches and she makes a short, muffled sound. Her back arches and he squeezes her again.

He could spend the whole night just touching her like this— he tried, once, and she rolled him over and put an end to that, but he _could_. Just like this, his hands unhooking her bra from behind her shoulders, then sliding his fingers underneath the wire, hot flesh and her heartbeat beneath his touch. Her, clutching to him as he rubs her nipples to hard points, and then some.

She starts to squirm in his lap and he squeezes her breasts gently. “Yeah?” he whispers, mouth still pressed to hers.

The noise she makes is quiet, low and muffled as she breathes it into his mouth. After that first night, he noticed that the more wound up for him she gets, the quieter she becomes—no elaborate moaning or screaming, just little gasps and hums and groans that bury under his skin and drive him wild. (That is, until he gets his hands on her—then, it’s an entirely different story.)

He kisses down her jaw, pressing his nose to the hollow behind her ear as he drags his hands down her sides. She shivers and winds her fingers into his hair, holding him there.

She shifts herself in his lap as he lays his hands on the tops of her thighs. “Yeah?” he repeats.

She rocks against him with an arch of her back. He inches his fingers back to the hem of her panties, slipping under the lace.

“These feel fancy,” he murmurs, rubbing his thumb and forefinger against the fabric. “Did you get all dressed up, hoping that I’d come around to see you?”

Lucretia leans back and levels a look at him that plainly says _really_? He laughs and hugs her waist, pressing his face to her chest.

“You know the answer,” she mumbles, rubbing her fingers against the nape of his neck.

“Ah…”

He does, and it burns in his gut. Her fingers curl and uncurl in his hair.

He shifts, gathering her up into his arms as he rocks up from the floor onto his knees. She yelps, then giggles as they tumble forward, wine making them both too unsteady for Magnus’ planned maneuver of standing upright with her in his arms.

He leans over her on his elbows, grinning as he laughs at himself, at the amusement in her voice.

“Hey there,” he whispers. “It seems I’ve fallen for you and can’t get up.”

“I beg to differ,” she says dryly, nudging her knee gently between his legs.

“Well, you caught me,” he says, voice uneven as she shifts her leg against him. “Lucretia…”

“That’s me,” she says.

“I need you,” he says, dropping his forehead to hers.

“You have me.”

He shakes his head, throat tight. “I, all of you, Lucretia,” he whispers. “I need all of you.”

He brings a hand between them, gently touching her sternum, three fingers pressed over her heart. “I need, I want this, too.”

She inhales sharply, chest jumping under his touch. Her eyes are wide, dark, and her mouth parts open as she gasps.

“I love you, Lucretia, I… I didn’t realize I _could_ but I do, and… may I?”

“You don’t need my permission to, to— to _love_ , gods,” she breathes, mouth shaking. “ _Magnus_.”

The way she says his name breaks his heart into a thousand pieces— all longing and grief and thick with tears. It swells in his chest and shatters him.

“I need to hear you, just once… tell me that it’s okay,” he pleads. “Tell me, without, without any of the arguments, any of the red tape, just… I need this.”

She grabs hold of his shoulder, fingers tight. “Yes,” she says.

“I need this,” he whispers, tapping her chest softly. “More than anything, I think… Lucretia, Lucretia, my Lucy—”

She makes a noise like a sob beneath him, clutching tighter. She arches her body up, hiding her face against his neck, fingers winding tightly into his hair.

“You have it,” she says against his skin. “I love you, Magnus, I love you.”

He slips his arms around her, scooping her up against his body. More than anything, he needed to hear it. It loosens a knot in his chest, where the fear was tangled in his worries and grief and the static.

* * *

Lucretia stirs against Magnus’ chest, feigning sleep for a few more moments. She still feels too raw, too open, to face him now that the wine has faded and what he’s said—what _she’s_ said— sinks into her bones.

And also, his off key humming and hand on her back is too nice to disturb. What is his preoccupation with Fantasy Bon Jovi anyway?

But she can’t pretend for long, especially not when Magnus reaches up to run his knuckles against her cheek. She’s been woken like this so many times in so many lifetimes, it’s second nature for her to tip her face into the press of his hand.

“I thought you were awake,” he says, turning his hand so his palm cups her cheek.

She finds herself smiling as she turns her cheek against the path of his hand, nuzzling into his palm. “You thought?”

“You stopped snoring,” he says with a laugh, tipping her chin up.

She keeps her eyes closed, letting him guide her into a gentle kiss. She could be anywhere, any time. She can feel the thrum of the engine behind her breast, coiled tight in her very essence, remade. She could open her eyes and find him, young and whole, eye darkened by the shadow of a bruise. To open her eyes is to betray this small sliver of home.

She shifts her body closer to his, skin on skin. Magnus makes an appreciative noise, and the sound settles in her gut, heavy and burning. She aches for him already— he’s already cracked open her ribs, now all that’s left is for him to fill her split-open heart.

But they’re not back on the Starblaster, they’re in her private quarters on her moon base, and Magnus…

She opens her eyes, and inhales sharply at the soft, adoring look on Magnus’ face. She can’t handle it, can’t bear the openness with which he looks at her, the tenderness in his touch, but at the same time, she wants to drown in it, wants to relish under the attention that was once hers and hers alone, anytime she wanted it.

She reaches up and gently touches the dark smudges beneath his eyes, a testament that he belongs to someone else now. He hadn’t been restless before the Chalice, not like this.

She wants to ask him if he managed to sleep, if her company made it easier—or worse.

“Tell me about her,” is what comes out instead. Magnus frowns, mouth parting in question. “Your wife. Julia.”

“Oh.”

Magnus rolls onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. The chasm that is her heart shakes, opens wider, and threatens to swallow her.

Magnus laces his fingers against his stomach, and already, Lucretia feels a chill, air cool against the place where his touch had left her.

She wants to take it back—she knows about Julia, _of course_ she knows. She’d placed Magnus in Ravens’ Roost because of the Waxmans, of how easy they were to love and how easily they loved in return. Their skill at the forge and with wood was only part of it. Of course she knows—all she’s accomplishing is sabotaging this one good thing, the gift that is Magnus’ companionship.

Maybe if he talks about Julia, he’ll realize he’s lonely and in need of company, that it’s Julia he loves and not _her_. That he’s mistaken respect and admiration for love, and maybe he’ll realize that, maybe he’ll realize his mistake.

Easier to pare him away from her heart now, than to suffer more disappointment later, when she’d grown used to his care.

“She… she was basically my life,” he says slowly.

He sounds so far away. She shouldn’t have put him through this again, shouldn’t have made him live the pain again.

“I’d never loved anyone like that before. I mean, I had my parents and dated some people before that, but I’d never loved anyone _so_ much. I’d have done anything for her. I started a revolution for her, with her. There’s nothing I wouldn’t support her in. Yeah... there’d never been, I’d never, yeah.”

Her heart twists and lurches in her chest. Something claws within her, scraping her already tender soul.

 _Me,_ it screams, _there was me_.

She’s alone, magical pinpricks of light shadowing faces, her family, one by one as they leave her alone. She’s alone in a room of seven.

…maybe not.

He twiddles his thumbs against his stomach, then reaches up and gestures at the ceiling in a wide arc. “She was _everything_. She was funny and strong and _so_ good. There was room in her heart for anything, even an idiot like me.”

“Oh, Magnus,” Lucretia whispers, feeling sick with the pain of it. It’s like losing him all over again. It’s checking in and seeing the ring on his finger. It’s him on his knees in her room, eyes rolling back as she tries to catch him. “You’re not…”

Magnus laughs once, a dry sound. “Back then, I wasn’t very… Nothing but my clothes on my back and a busted up head from a-a roadside robbery, and more energy than a wound-up puppy. I’d go to bars just because I was bored, bust up fights because I didn’t know what else to do with myself once my shift at the shop ended. I was no folk hero then, just some dumb kid who didn’t know what to do with themselves. Julia changed all that. Hit me upside the head one night outside the main bar, told me off for making her dad look bad. I was _humiliated_. Taught me better ways to blow off steam; how to go around instead of through. She gave me so much grief, kept telling me I could do better, I could do better ‘til I _wanted_ to. Gods, I loved her.”

She can see him still, pressed khakis that he had to be bullied into, crisp white tee-shirt torn and rumpled, jacket red as the blood on his knuckles as he pushes a bag of ice against his face, grinning over the bartop at her on the floor. She hadn’t loved him then, but the memory is still so clear, so fond. Magnus’ perpetual restless energy was the bane and the amusement of the entire crew, and without his memories, how could she be surprised that he fell back into old habits? That he had to relearn how to cope with the energy crawling through his limbs, the one he’d once told her felt like ants under his skin?

“You seem to have a… type. For women that hit you upside the head,” Lucretia says without really thinking about anything at all. Bitterness and regret well up in her, pooling in her mouth, behind her eyes, behind her ears. She knows she did this to herself, but it’s still there, acrid and rotting within her. “Is there anything else we did the same?”

She doesn’t think she’s said anything so hateful in years. (No, that isn’t true, she says despicable things every day as Madame Director—her family, her strange, wonderful, loving family was never _evil_.)

It would be the best case scenario if he _had_ misplaced his love for Julia in her, because they were similar— after all, hadn’t she _wanted_ that, just moments ago?

But the idea of being weighed and measured against another woman, her personality found to be the same, and loved just for that… Who could compare to someone like that? Certainly not her.

Magnus turns and looks at her, and she rolls onto her back, looking resolutely up at the ceiling. She keeps one hand relaxed against her chest, the other curling tight underneath the sheets where Magnus can’t see.

“You aren’t anything like Julia,” he says.

She tightens her fists, digging her nails into her palms. She’s caught in the torrents of emotion that churns in her gut. Shame and guilt and loneliness mix in her stomach, burning her face so hot that she’s sure even Magnus can see the flush of it on her cheeks.

Of course she’s not like Julia—she _knew_ that. Her capacity for love is…warped, something small and misshapen and unable to meet other people halfway.

Once, she thought it was boundless, that she had done what she did out of love, out of mercy, but the longer she goes without them, the deeper she gets in her mire, it doesn’t seem like love at all. Everything feels fleeting, preformative. People don’t _love_ her, they need her services and that is all.

“Well,” she says. Her voice is thin, brittle. “That’s... something.”

Magnus is quiet for a moment, then shifts, rolling back towards her. He lays a hand over hers, pressing it to her skin when she jerks it away. “Hey,” he whispers. “It’s not a bad thing.”

He cups her chin and tips her head. “I won’t ever love anyone again like I loved Julia, that’s true. But I won’t ever love anyone like I love you, or anyone else for that matter.”

She tries to look away, but Magnus keeps her face turned towards him.

“Lucretia,” he says softly. “Don’t do this. Don’t shut down.”

“I’m _not_ —”

“Yeah. You are.”

“I… what else am I… I’m not, you said it yourself, I’m not like Julia. I’m not funny or kind or _good_. I’ve never inspired that sort of… no one’s ever loved me like that,” she says despite herself. She curls up a little deeper inside of herself; she should hold her tongue. This is—was—the man who loved her, and one day he’ll remember it.

And he’ll remember this. Remember her degrading what they had like this, but sometimes she wonders if it ever really was real. Sometimes, she wakes up and wonders if the century was something she made up herself, some elaborate story crafted to fuel her madness. Sometimes she forgets what it feels like to have a real family. Even this, now, feels like an artificial version of love, like a banana flavored hard candy.

She wishes she could give up all her memories of the man Magnus had been, just so she could fall in love with him all over again. It would be so much easier if she could. 

“I don’t think that’s true,” Magnus says. “Listen, you asked me about _Julia_.”

“I’m aware—”

“But you didn’t ask me about _you_ ,” he says over her, pressing his thumb to her lips.

“I don’t want to know how I, how I stack up to your wife,” she protests, turning her head away. “I don’t want to know anymore.”

“You have the loyalty of the entire base,” Magnus says. “The people here love you.”

“Do the names _Lucas_ and _Brian,_ or hey, _Bain,_ mean anything to you? Try again, Magnus, you know very well that everyone’s only here because they wouldn’t have homes elsewise,” she sighs.

She extricates herself from his grasp and sits up, throat tight with unshed tears. Everything she’s done the past few months have been a mistake, a lonely, disastrous mistake. She slides her legs out from the sheets, ignoring the burn in her thighs that just begs for a long night of snuggling.

“You believe in what you’re doing, and the people here respect that. _I_ respect that. You’re trying to keep people from getting hurt like before,” Magnus continues, shifting as well. His fingers press against the small of her back, then travel up to her shoulder.

She stays quiet. She can’t argue his point, but only because he can’t know she had a hand in the Relics. It’s not time for him to know. It could be, but then Wonderland… and his anger and his judgement.

“People are still being hurt,” she says after a long moment.

His fingers press into her skin, thumb rolling circles against the base of her spine. “Well, that’s three dumbasses’ faults, if they just did their job right, then maybe no one would,” he says lightly.

When she doesn’t respond, he presses his forehead to her neck, reaching down to grab her hand.

“I don’t know a whole lot,” he says softly. “Not, not in the ways that you do. But I know that you are funny and generous and kind and resilient. Your last lover, the one you said you left behind, was a fool to not realize that he should have gone with you. I know you’re lonely, Lucretia, and you don’t… you don’t need to be. You’re doing the best you can, with the good you know how to do. Yeah, okay, secret moon base? A little shady. But you’re trying to do something good, I know you are.”

“Magnus, there may… there may come a day when you realize that you’re wrong about me, that I’ve done… terrible things to survive, things that haunt me every day,” she whispers shakily.

“More terrible than pineapple on pizza?”

“By a wide margin.”

He kisses the back of her neck and wraps his arms around her waist. “I forgive you.”

She closes her eyes tightly, afraid of acknowledging the tears pooling on her chin, afraid to move, to speak, to breathe.

“I love you,” Magnus promises. “So I forgive you.”

Lucretia turns slowly, then lets Magnus pull her back down into bed.

He tugs her close, curling around her body. She rolls to her side, closing her eyes as Magnus pulls her thigh over his hip, arranging her just so. “I wouldn’t be so sure,” she says, because she has to try to discourage this, even though her heart speeds in her chest.

“I mean it,” he whispers, cupping her cheek. He pulls her up into a kiss, and her entire world spins with the gentleness of it. She feels light, dizzy with something she can’t quite name. “I forgive you.”

It’s hope, the feeling is hope and joy, a bright burst of emotion filling her entire body as she kisses him. She loves him, she trusts him, and for the first time, she can imagine a future where she stays after everything is over, where she has a family again.

He says he forgives her; after everything, he’s still her Magnus—her heart is safe with him.


	4. Hand Around a Blade

Lucretia presses herself up against him and he pulls her closer by the hip. He’s got one arm wedged underneath the pillows, already falling asleep, but he ignores it in favor of the way she cups his cheek, runs her thumb against the slope of it, mouth opening against his own.

She goes lax into his touch, body slack in the familiar curve of her body against his. Loose-limbed, fingers stroking, breasts pressed to his chest, ribs pressing into his with each inhale until it’s a light rapid touch as she pants through her nose. He kisses her through that languid limpness, stroking the comfortable warmth of her body with slow passes of his open palm until she starts to squirm.

Her leg hitches higher on his hip, her hand moves to his hair. He knows if he takes it up a notch now, it’ll be over too quickly, her body will be too sensitive even though it’s been a few hours since he’d first laid her out. She has to be warmed up slow.

Everything about her has to be taken slowly. Lucretia is a lesson in patience; if he were any younger, if he were at any other point in his life, he wouldn’t be able to bear her skittish nature. Truthfully, if Julia had never taught him how to _wait,_ he would never know the payoff of each coaxing encounter.

He slides his hand to her back, urging her up against his chest. He draws away from their kiss to press his forehead to hers, sweeping his thumb in a slow back and forth against the base of her neck.

“You good?” he whispers softly. He doesn’t _need_ to check in, he knows she is: her quiet little whimper as he’d pulled away, the soft points of her nipples on his skin, the damp heat he feels growing between her legs where her cunt is pressed to the apex of his thigh.

He watches her lashes flutter as she looks down between their bodies, then back up to meet his gaze. Her teeth find her lip as she tightens her thigh against his hip, pressing herself closer as subtly as she can.

“Lucretia?” he prompts, stroking his knuckles from her neck to her chin.

She nods, her fingers curling against his scalp. Heat prickles up and surges down his spine, and settles in his groin. He’s already half-hard against her stomach; he feels himself twitch and her fingers curl tighter.

He groans and shifts his leg against her, dropping his hand to the base of her spine. He feels her tremble as well; she tucks her calf under his knee, winding her leg more firmly around his.

“Do you want to go again?” he asks, unable to hold back the lilting teasing in his voice.

He knows she has something sarcastic building on her tongue by the way she huffs, but he cuts it off before it’s even formed, pressing the small of her back as he tenses his thigh against her. The shallow movement drags a sharp gasp from her and he grins, blood simmering deep in his veins.

Her hips circle against his leg, her body trembling as she clings close to him.

“Do you want to make love again?” he asks, voice hoarse with desire.

Lucretia gasps, then moans, her cunt twitching on his leg. She presses her face to his neck and rocks her hips sharply on him, lips twitching against his skin.

She’s wound so tight against him that Magnus is sure she’ll come on his thigh, then and there. It knocks him dizzy. He remembers her voice, anguished as she whispered she loved him, then again, just now, when she thought she couldn’t stack up to Julia.

When she thought there would be something that would keep him from her.

In that moment, there is nothing that could keep him from loving her, save for herself.

“Will _you_ make love to me?” he asks, tipping her face up so he can look at her again.

She swallows hard, jaw clenching as her eyes shine bright with unshed tears, but she nods. She nods and leans forward to kiss him, her hand sliding between them.

His heart sings with it— she loves him, trusts him, finally, whole-heartedly.

Lucretia takes him into her hand and he groans at the light touch of her fingers. She strokes him once, twice, then shifts her hips. He glides between her lips, head sliding against her clit, slow, slow, and then he’s pressed to her entrance.

She rocks her hips and he meets the movement with a slow roll of his own, and then he’s sheathed within her, hot and soft and supple. Her leg inches higher, opening her up just a little around him. He grips her thigh, then her ass, letting her rock the slow in-out drag of their sex.

Her breath shudders, catches, and trips on the call of her voice, soft and hoarse. He curls his fingers into the sheets beneath the pillows, resisting the urge to clutch her close, roll over, change the slow, shallow roll of her hips on him by sinking in deep.

She whines and grabs at his neck, at his shoulders. She presses her forehead to his, breath hot against his cheeks. He watches, rapt, as her eyes slide shut and her head tips forward, mouth open as she groans.

“Yeah, there you go,” he murmurs. He presses his palm against the small of her back, using only the slightest bit of pressure to keep her pressed to him.

“Ah… that’s—” She jerks against him, body taut against his own. She squirms, hips rutting closer, heel pressed to the back of his thigh as she moves against him.

“Mm-hmm.”

He rocks slowly against her more frantic movements, whispering soft praises to her. How gorgeous she is, how hot and wet she is against him, the way the little nub of her clit rubs against his base with each movement, the way her leg keeps moving up, grasping onto him.

“I love you,” he says, grabbing her hip and holding her in place when he feels her start to twitch around him. She’s close, and he knows it. He can feel it in the way she pulses around him, her body straining to keep him deep with each shallow thrust; in how her voice has gone gravely and broken as she calls for him. “I love you and nothing can change that.”

She shakes and clenches her fingers against his shoulder, body going rigid against him as she tenses every inch of her body to hold onto him, to hold back the pleasure that’s surely coursing through her as it is him. He throbs within her, body electric with the feeling.

He slips his hand out from under her and rolls, tugging her with him. There’s a split second where her eyes shoot open and she yelps, but it cuts off into a ragged groan as she sinks onto him fully, pubic mound pressed to his, his hands firmly on her hips pulling her down his erection.

She shudders, and slumps forward against his chest, hips circling frantically as she comes around him.

“Shit,” he hisses. He thrusts up, hard, into her as she throbs around him. She’s so slick, so warm, her body malleable with pleasure against him. “Lucretia, shit—”

Her knees grip his hips as she rocks on him, gasping. Her voice rises, then breaks, hands scrabbling up from the sheets to his shoulders.

She braces herself, pressing down on him as she lifts herself. The pressure of her hands, the weight of her, makes his head spin.

She barely sits up, just arranges herself over him and moves, a slow undulation of her body that starts with her chest, down, then up, then her hips.

He reaches up and grabs her ass, squeezing, then spreading her cheeks. He brushes his fingers against the outside of her lips, swollen with desire and dripping from where they meet. His head spins and he gasps. He fumbles with his hands, grips her hips, and pulls her hard to him.

“Lucretia,” he begs.

She sits up, slowly. He cracks his eyes open, barely even aware that he closed them in the first place; he watches as her breasts sway, breath sharp and short, as her muscles work as she rocks herself on him.

He runs hands along her thighs, up her belly, over her breasts, silently worshiping her. He reaches up for her, and she takes one hand into her own, leaning down to press her mouth to his fingers.

“ _Fuck_.”

She takes his middle and ring finger into her mouth; the significance isn’t lost on him. Just a few hours earlier, he’d used those same fingers to ease her open, his thumb on her clit the way it rests under her jaw.

His toes curl into the sheets, body tensing. He feels her tongue between his fingers, her weight on his hips, and the slide of her around him, and it’s overwhelming.

“Lucretia, I—” he begs. “Please. Baby. Lucy, love, please, I—”

She leans forward and grinds against him, squeezing her thighs tight against him, and whispers his name.

His fingers fall from her mouth and he grabs her hips like a lifeline, and he’s done. He comes hard, pulling her down into the upward thrusts of his hips, making a mess of them both, still throbbing in the aftershocks as she shoves her hand between them and rubs herself roughly, with more pressure and speed than he would have used.

She groans once, then shudders, sharp and hard around him, then lets herself fall slack. She knocks the little breath he has out of his lungs, but he still laughs, light-headed with pleasure and delight.

She tucks her face against his neck, kissing underneath his ear as she pants.

“I love you,” she whispers, so quiet he can barely hear her, but the declaration is like a shout to his heart.

He grins stupidly and hugs her tight, nuzzling the side of her hair. He whispers it back, again and again, until he falls asleep.

* * *

Magnus wakes slowly, then all at once when he inhales for a yawn and catches the scent of bacon in the air. He rolls, groping around under the sheets for Lucretia, then yawns again as his fingers hit cool sheets.

“‘Cretia…?” he mumbles. “Food?”

“Good morning, sleepy bear,” Lucretia answers him with a small laugh.

Something about her voice, about her words, the warmth and tenderness of it makes his heart throb, tingling like a limb fallen asleep.

He opens his eyes and rolls towards the sound. He props his head up on his hand, peering across the room at Lucretia at her desk.

He’d been surprised, the first time he’d visited her chambers. Not only because one wall was entirely transparent, overlooking the lands below, but because her room is only slightly bigger than his own. It’s not small, by any standards, but it isn’t _large_ either, not like her office or the dais room. It’s minimally decorated, as well; aside from the glass wall and her bed, the only other piece of furniture seems to be an extremely large oak desk with a drafting table on it.

It’s cleared of all her drafts for once, empty save for a heavily laden tray of food. She sits at the desk, in what Magnus has come to recognize as her ass-kicking clothes, the guard uniforms’ leggings and flat-soled boots, with a wrap on around the sleeveless shell she wears in place of the tear-away coat. She’s been awake a while, and it shows.

He slides out of bed, scooping his underwear up off the floor as he goes. He manages to tug them on without falling, and sits in the chair obviously purloined from her office.

“What time is it?” he yawns.

“Not too late,” Lucretia chuckles. “But not too early, either.”

She closes the notebook she’d been writing in, and his heart flutters to see it’s the red one he’d gotten her after Candlenights’.

“You could have woken me.”

She sets the journal aside and shakes her head. “I wanted to let you sleep,” she says. She reaches out to touch his cheek. “You... you’ve been looking pretty rough, you know?”

He takes her hand and presses her knuckles to his mouth, inhaling slowly. “It’s getting better, you don’t need to worry,” he says gruffly.

“Oh, I’ll worry regardless,” Lucretia says. “About you, about the Bureau, the Relics… it’s no harder for me to worry than it is to breathe.”

“I wish that wasn’t true,” Magnus says. “I wish there was a certain three idiots who did their jobs well enough that you wouldn’t.”

Lucretia twists her hand from his and flicks his nose. “Stop that.”

He huffs, grinning easily at her. She taps his nose with the tips of her fingers.

“You three are… unconventional, but so much progress has been made because of you. And I am going to worry, because you _do_ do well on your jobs. They’re so dangerous, and you do so well, that I’m afraid for you. Overconfidence is dangerous, and besides… Obviously my impartialness as an employer has been deeply… compromised.”

Magnus grins and scoots his chair forward. “Is that what we’re calling this?”

She levels a look at him, one that dissolves into giggles as he wiggles his eyebrows at her.

“Breakfast,” she says, gesturing to the table. “Before it gets _too_ cold.”

Magnus scoots closer, until his thigh presses to hers. “Did you make all this?” he asks, watching her wave her wand over the food. Steam rises off of mugs of coffee, both a delightful creamy-brown color, as well as a very generous plate full of waffles that are too uneven at the edges to be anything but homemade.

“Ah, well,” Lucretia says with a delicate cough. “Some of it was a matter of just, plating it.”

“You made me breakfast,” he says, the smile on his face so involuntarily permanent that he thinks it will never fade. “You made _waffles_. How did you know those are my favorite?”

“You told me!” Lucretia says with a laugh, taking a small plate from the tray. She piles several waffles on a plate, tops them with bacon, and garnishes it with a spoonful of some sort of berry salad. “I guessed on your coffee preferences, though.”

“I have a bit of a sweet tooth,” Magnus says as Lucretia passes him the plate. She smiles at him, face soft.

“I know,” she whispers. “I made both the same, so if it’s bad, we’ll both suffer.”

“Fair,” he laughs, waiting until she’s served herself to pour syrup over his plate. “How’d you guess that I liked it all just on the waffle?”

“Magnus, I do recall you inhaling some ungodly mixture of potatoes, chicken, and gravy once,” she sighs. “An obscene amount, actually.”

Magnus cuts into his stack of waffles, shrugging as he shoves it into his mouth. “It’s efficient,” he says with his mouth full.

Lucretia snorts and takes a delicate bite of her own. “Really?”

“These are _really_ good,” Magnus retorts. “We should cook together.”

She smiles and spears a single blueberry with her fork. “Well, I’m… that’s good,” she says. “It’s always you making things for me, and… It’s from a box, but I wanted to return the favor. I’m not sure how well I’d do what you’ve been doing for me.”

“It’s not a favor, it’s… It’s something that I want to do for you,” Magnus argues. “You don’t have to repay me. We’ll have dinner. The two of us, tonight. We’ll cook something.”

Lucretia shakes her head and looks up at the ceiling briefly. She gives a soft laugh and lays a hand on his knee. “Magnus, it’s not me feeling _indebted_ to you, though, certainly I do. I want to do things that make you happy, just because they would make you happy. I thought that breakfast would be a-a good place to start.”

She pauses for a moment. She smiles at him and squeezes his knee; Magnus swallows hard, face warming. Lucretia usually isn’t as forward with her affection, choosing to instead deflect or tease or let the moment pass with a quiet smile.

“I’d really like to cook together,” she says softly. “A date, then?”

He hadn’t expected anything to change between them, not really. He’d been tired, they’d both been drunk, and while what he said was true—he loves her, he loves her so much it pushes up against the edges of his very consciousness, stretching him until he’s numb and tingling from it— he didn’t expect for her to continue to reciprocate his affections like this.

It knocks him off-kilter, it makes him think of Ravens’ Roost, it makes him think of Julia and having the world ripped out from under his feet. Maybe he just doesn’t trust good things when they’re handed to him; maybe he’s just so used to fighting for things, that settling down feels odd.

This is what he wanted, more than anything. So why… why does it feel off?

“Magnus?” Lucretia asks, pulling her hand back. Her eyes search his face, a frown creasing her face. “Are you all right? I… I’m sorry, I must have... that was a little much wasn’t it?”

“No,” he says, grabbing her hand and squeezing it. “No, no, you. That was sweet. I’m just… I guess I’m a little hungover? My head’s a bit…”

“Coffee,” she says firmly. She slips her hand from his and presses a mug into it instead. “Coffee will help. We, ah… had a late night as well.”

Magnus grins as he lifts the mug to his lips. “Yeah we did,” he says smugly.

Lucretia rolls her eyes again and picks up her plate, turning in her chair to look out the window as she eats. He sees the pretty flush rising on her cheeks and settles into the silence happily, half pleased and half deeply unsettled.

It reminds him of something, some moment before now. Breakfast and sunrise, the horizon spread out before him. Was it Julia he did this with? Or was it… No name, no face comes to mind, just the quiet feeling of a happiness rooted in repetition.

“You know,” she says after a moment of silence. “There’s… a real chance that… that you three can do this thing.”

Magnus takes a long sip of coffee. It’s perfectly warm and sweet, with a dash of cinnamon on the top. He watches her idly swirl the last of her waffle around her plate, gaze far away.

“Yeah?” he prompts.

She nods, and takes a bite. “Yeah,” she says with her mouth full. “Fuckin… fucking finally. It’ll be over.”

Magnus’ chest squeezes with an emotion he can’t quite name. Nostalgia, in the strangest way. He’s lived this moment, misses that first time of living it. He knows this scene, he knows this line, this feeling, this moment.

He looks out the window, tongue heavy in his mouth. The sun hasn’t risen over the continent yet, but casts its first rays over the curved horizon, turning the air pink and green.

“Yeah?” he finally manages.

“You’ve done what I couldn’t and… I... I took all of that onto my shoulders. Every day, I worry about what I did, what I took from the world. If I made the right choices. But so many people were hurt, were suffering… what happens now is on me. It’s my fault, and it’s my responsibility. And it’s ending,” she says.

Magnus watches as the horizon brightens, filling her bedroom with bright white light.

“I ah, this may be forward of me,” Lucretia says softly. “But when… when all of this is done, and… there are things, things I had to… when they, when those come to light and, and…”

She falters and sets her plate aside. She lays her hands in her lap, then twists her fingers together. “I want there to be an after,” she says baldly, voice cracking as her eyes shine. She looks at her hands. “Please. You don’t… you don’t have to promise that you’ll stay, just that you’ll be alive. That you’ll listen to me, really listen, when the time comes, that I can have a chance.”

His throat is impossibly tight. He can’t bear to see her hurting like this, even though he doesn’t know _why_ , all he knows is that she hurts, that what finally broke her walls down was his forgiveness.

 _Oh, Lucretia_ , he thinks, _what did you do?_

“I love you,” he says. “I promised you, didn’t I? I forgive you, already.”

“It’s not that simple,” Lucretia protests. “I… Magnus, I… made decisions for an entire world, on my own, for so long. It… it isn’t… was it really my place to do that? Could you really forgive me, or have I made it so you feel like you can’t do anything else?”

His eyes hurt, his teeth hurt. He swallows and runs his tongue over his lips. “I mean, your hand seemed kind of forced,” he says slowly. “Everyone lost someone in the Relic Wars. I don’t think I’d ever… Me and Julia, you know, we just sort of decided on our own that the Roost needed to fight back. Was it our decision to make? Fuck if I know. Kept me up for a long time. Still does. We made that decision, and I lost everything because of it. But I wouldn’t go back.”

Lucretia fidgets, twisting her fingers together tighter and tighter.

“Would you go back, Lucretia? Would you change your mind?”

“...there are things I… I would do differently. But ultimately?” She pauses, then laughs shakily. “No,” she whispers, sniffling softly. “I’m so sorry, Magnus. I don’t mean to cry—”

Magnus closes his eyes tightly, the light suddenly searing; he blindly reaches out for her hands. He holds them tight, grounding himself in the feel of his fingers around hers. This feeling…

“It’s, it’s okay,” he says.

He opens his eyes, and reaches with his free hand, wiping her cheeks with his thumbs. He opens his mouth, unsure of what to say, not when his head is spinning, not when it feels like all he is is too large for his body.

There’s a chime, the ringing of a bell that echoes softly through the room. Lucretia stands and dusts her hands on her leggings.

“Ah, that would be Davenport,” she says with an apologetic smile. She holds her hand out to him. “Time for practice, I’m afraid.”

“Practice? Now?” he complains. “Really? After _waffles_?”

She laughs gently.

“I’m sorry, Magnus,” she says, her voice layered with quiet amusement.

She’s haloed by light, her face softened by the shadows. Her form twitches. Doubles.

_Please just lie down._

“What?”

_I don’t want_

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” she says. “It’s just for a little bit.”

_you to fall_

The light. Her eyes shine. Her hands are still outstretched, but his skin feels tight, electric. It’s opening the scroll all over, it’s falling into the white space of Refuge, it’s dying, it’s all that _time_ that was empty. It’s June, offhandedly concerned at what she sees in that space, it’s the dizziness of the moonbase, it’s…

_and hurt yourself_

It’s _static_.

“It’ll be over soon,” she promises.

And he knows her, he knows her, more than just feeling close to her. He can map her face in the shadows, smooth and young, and he knows her, but as soon as he realizes it, it dissolves before him, a sea of unknowing.

It’s him in a red robe, it’s her behind her desk, it’s the red robe asking for their trust, it’s feeling like he’s home, but not.

He hears his voice without speaking. His entire mind, body, all of him, asks, before the static swallows him again:

 _What did you do_?

There’s only one thing that can answer the question that the static asks: the thing that created it.

He has to go to the Voidfish.

* * *

It takes a day for the static to clear, a day he spends training, his body moving without his mind, sitting, staring at nothing. It’s worse than opening the scroll. It buzzes through him, scrubbing his mind and ringing in his ears.

He can’t think, he can’t move. All he sees is light, fuzzing over, Lucretia’s outline, her voice, over and over as it dissolves into nothing.

 _I’m so sorry, Magnus_.

She’s sorry, she’s sorry. She’s said it so many times, so many ways— why?

When he comes to, he spends the next day torn between two ideas: his initial, gut-tug to go to the Voidfish and the desire to go to Lucretia. He just left her high and dry, but he’s in no state to actually go see her, much less explain why he bailed.

How _does_ one go to their boss-slash-girlfriend that he suspects them of magically erasing… Erasing what?

That’s not even how the Voidfish _works_. He drank the ichor, he’s good; he remembers the Relic Wars, what else _is_ there?

Except that scroll. The Red Robe that follows them around. The statue in Refuge. All that time the cup rewound, longer than he’s ever been alive. The skittering sensation he feels when he tries to think about it all, the free-falling pit in his gut when he looked up at Lucretia.

He keeps busy, distracting him from the nerves he feels building in his gut. He trains with Carey, shops with Taako, talks shit with Merle until Merle drifts off under the stars on the quad.

What he’s about to do hasn’t been forbidden, exactly, but he knows Lucretia won’t be happy with him. (Neither will Johann, but Johann’s never quite happy.)

But when has he _ever_ followed rules he felt weren’t fair? Silence falls throughout the Bureau, and Magnus rushes in.

* * *

“I know it’s irresponsible of me,” she says, adjusting the sextant so she can plot a more accurate course for Avi’s canons. “Very… very irresponsible.”

It’s been three days since Magnus told her he loves her, and she… And she said it back. It still swirls within her, bright and aching and new.

He hasn’t been back to see her since. She’s afraid she’s pushed her luck, pushed him too hard with her own feelings. She said so many things far too soon, far too seriously.

She had been so openly affectionate and needy and… her face burns.

She sets her charcoal stick down and sighs. She pushes the map away and lays her head on her desk, watching the baby voidfish swirl about in its tank. She presses her finger to the glass and smiles as it presses its tendrils to the imprint of her finger.

Emotion swells in her chest, constricting her throat and burning her eyes. Fisher used to do the same thing— when they’d gotten bigger, they lifted the lid from their tank and caressed her with their tentacles, tickling Magnus and petting her in a mimicry of the way they’d seen her brush her hair.

The last time she was alone with Fisher, she’d been terrified. Her old friend was so big and so desperate, she’d been scared they’d hurt themselves trying to reach for her. She knows the song they sing, and it’s one she can’t answer. And when she can, it will be too late.

Tears trickle from her eyes. “I love him, baby fish,” she whispers. “I was stupid, little guy. Grade A fuckin’ moron.”

“He’s a headstrong idiot, reckless, like he used to be, but he’s so different at the same time...”

She sighs and taps a gentle pattern to the glass. The baby trills back a quiet melody.

“Why did I let this happen?” she whispers. She drops her hand from the glass. “I love him, even like this, but…”

But he’s left her alone again. He’d promised to come back by when they’d parted that morning for training, but he’d never showed up. In fact, she hasn’t seen him _at all_. It’s like he’s just disappeared off the base entirely.

She knows that’s not true, that they walk a very precarious line with their relationship. Sometimes Magnus just can’t make it without being seen, sometimes he has to do other things to cover up what they’re doing.

The words die and swell in her throat. She watches the baby hover in its tank, sparkling and small, feeling the ache in her chest grow up and out, to the tips of her fingers, to the roof of her mouth, to her burning eyes.

She knows how foolishly weak she’s been, desperate for companionship and love and a small taste of what they’d had before the Relics ruined everything. Before _she’d_ ruined everything. She never thought she’d have even a sliver of Magnus’ heart ever again, not after she’d seen him with Julia all those years ago. And though she hates the grief and sorrow he’d gone through, deep within that guilt is a kernel of relief that he survived and he’d turned his gaze back to her, without even knowing.

And she loves him, more than just the memory of him, young and raw and eternally in his red jacket. She loves _this_ Magnus, who brings her food and flowers he’d picked from the topiaries like she wouldn’t recognize them; who lacks the tactical finesse from their century, but manages all the same. Who is headstrong and stubborn and a little coarse but still so _good._

Who found her again and saw something within her worth loving, who makes her want to be good, be worth that love and adoration all over again.

But she’s a liar and a bully and Magnus hates those things more than anything.

One day, he’ll know, and she’ll be all alone again. And it will hurt. She’s so scared that she already told him too much, that he’s figured out her game, and doesn’t like it. That he doesn’t like _her_ —he just likes the feeling of not being alone.

There is going to be a time, soon, where Magnus will have to choose again, and it will not be her he chooses. She knows this like she knows her own breathing. But she _hopes_.

Oh, she hopes.

“You’ll meet him one day, Fisher Junior,” she whispers. “You’ll adore him, just like your parent. The three of you will be good, it’ll be funny.”

She turns her head away and runs her hands through her hair. She feels scraped raw: Wonderland, the Hunger looming, Barry out there, somewhere, Magnus… Magnus, carrying her back to her room, his weight solid as he pressed her down into the sheets, whispering his love over and over, her voice a quiet echo through the night.

Butterflies stir in her stomach just thinking of it, of how tenderly he’d held her, more so than usual, like she was precious glass. How she’d echoed the sentiment, pressed skin-to-skin with him, heart cracked open and overflowing.

Magnus has a way of making her feel young all over, filled with giddy joy at being loved so much that it brought him to his knees; he has a way of coaxing out the hope of something past her fevered quest.

It doesn’t matter how much she _knows_ she shouldn’t, but she keeps wondering if there could be another future than the one she’s imagined for herself.

One with Magnus, like before all of this, one with them together again despite everything instead of the yawning darkness she knows waits for her.

She presses her forehead to the desk, fingers grasping at the roots of her hair.

For so long, she’s ached for her family, for Magnus to come back to her. The end is almost in sight, and if she can coach them into surviving Wonderland, maybe what they’ve built like this could be enough to buoy them against the storm of the Hunger and what she did.

But she doesn’t foresee her life being very long at all after all of this; she doesn’t know if she has the strength for the spell, for the light, for the Hunger. She doesn’t know if she has the strength to face her consequences; her heart quakes and shatters with the fear of it.

She hadn’t planned this far ahead, she hadn’t planned to be separated for so long, for such disastrous things to happen to them, for Lup to still be lost and for Barry to be reduced to an angry haunting. For her to be embroiled in an affair with Magnus, his memories gone, or for her to be leading an entire organizations. For Fisher or the baby or any of it.

She doesn’t know how to start untangling everything, but she knows she must, in order to be even the smallest bit deserving of Magnus’ love. She wants it, more than anything. Wants their quiet hours and stolen moments, wants the promise of more to come, of a date spent in the kitchen together, like they did when they were young (though Magnus doesn’t know it yet, can’t know it yet, but she remembers, she remembers it all for the both of them).

She’s lost in thought when her alarm starts, the sound and light so unexpected that she starts so badly she knocks her papers and wand clean off the floor. She clutches her chest, looking around as it rings, and rings and rings.

“No,” she whispers, anguished. “No, who—”

She stands as the echoes of it ring in her ears. She feels dizzy with adrenaline as she turns in her office. She grabs her wand up from the floor where she’s dropped it, and quickly whispers the spell that allows her sight into Fisher’s chambers, but it’s dark, it’s dark save for Fisher’s bell, and the shimmering pools of ichor on the floor, and the spell can’t reach further than the small window she’d enchanted—if there was anyone in the room, she wasted her time being startled by her own magic.

She looks to her desk, where her holy symbol floats, as innocuously deadly as ever. She touches it with one finger, feeling the sphere of magic that spreads around the base. There’s nothing in its net, there’s no indication that Barry tried to pass through— there’s the strange hum of background lich power that’s been there since the day she set it up, but she assumes that it’s just the lingering effects of Robbie’s possession.

The baby’s bell lights up, stars twinkling in patterns she’s never seen before, but she knows, she knows the story those lights tell, and it’s too soon, too soon.

“No, no, no, I’m so close, not now,” she whispers, hands shaking over her chest. “Who knows about you, little fish?”

* * *

_Egg babe._

The phrase repeats, again and again in his mind. He can shower off the ichor that coats him, sleep away the exhaustion the encounter left him with, but what he saw, what he knows, he cannot escape.

There’s a second Voidfish. Lucretia stole the Voidfish from the Red Robes, and then took its baby, yet the Voidfish insisted it was not a prisoner.

He… his face, in a red robe? He is?

Static, he is static. _She_ is static.

So much static.

He is static and there is a second Voidfish. Lucretia _knows_ something, and he can’t understand what, but he knows it is something momentous, life-altering.

He finds himself at her door, late, late, late, and unsure of what he wants from her.

He picks the lock, and walks into the dimly lit office.

“Lucretia,” he says hoarsely.

She turns, wide-eyed, from where she was staring up at her portrait. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, freed from its usual bun, and her eyes are red-rimmed.

“Magnus! I thought that door was locked,” she breathes, pressing her hand to her chest. “You scared me!”

“It was unlocked,” he lies, reaching for her cheek. He smooths his thumb over her skin, looking down into her eyes. She’s been crying; she hasn’t been sleeping.

Her eyes are red and bruised and swollen. The look in her eyes is almost feral, haunted and guarded and so familiar. But not so familiar that he can name it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says.

“Make that two of us,” she murmurs. She steps forward and he tips her chin up, kissing her fiercely.

He loves her, though. He loves her so much that it burns him raw.

Who is she?

Who is _he_? Who is the Red Robed figure in the tube? How does she fit into all of it, where does _he_ fit?

She was home, kissing her felt like coming _home_.

Static, static, kissing her is static. It’s the fall of the Roost all over again, a cold numbness that swallows him whole.

She walks them backwards, behind her portrait, down the hall, to her room with its wide picture window to the world below. Her dress is the first to go, then his shirt.

She falls falls back against her bed, or maybe he pushes her down; he climbs over her, fingers on her chin, tipping her back, back, her body stretching out underneath him.

_Can I trust the Director?_

No answer, just confusion. Why? Why?

Can he trust Lucretia?

Can he trust himself? The Red Robe?

Who _are_ they? Who? Who?

Who is he kissing? Who wants him to be careful? Who is sorry, why?

He moves down her body, kissing her neck, her collar, her chest.

She keeps quiet, her wrist pressed to her mouth, quieting the sounds that escape her. He watches her jaw clench, her neck twitch with the effort of staying silent.

While it isn’t unusual for Lucretia to occasionally muffle herself when she’s feeling self-conscious, it usually isn’t like this.

He watches, calculating. This is controlled, deliberate silence, not the embarrassed muffling of someone shy.

Her heart thuds against his mouth, his cheeks. Her arms wind around his neck, fingers deep in his hair. He’d wanted this for so long, but after the cup, after the memory of Julia, after the scroll and the statue and his face and _do you trust me_ ; after the ichor and the song in his ears and the vision of her figure and the relayed panic, his want is for something more than her skin beneath his fingers.

He focuses on the staccato beat of his heart and the crackling of static.

She knows something. She knows. She must.

He grabs her hand and uncovers her mouth.

“Lucretia,” he whispers, bringing his mouth to hers.

She’s kissing him like he’s a lover, like he remembers kissing Julia—deeply, softly, with an urgency that only comes with love and care. She’s always kissed him like that, from the get-go; even that first night, after that first kiss, she knew just where to touch him, how to kiss him, all the small things that he’d forgotten he’d liked.

Forgotten… static… trust. _Egg babe._

_I’m so sorry, Magnus, I love you—_

Her voice in his head, but her mouth is not moving. Her voice. Her voice.

“Why won’t you say anything?”

“Magnus, I, I didn’t realize we were having a verbal _discussion_ ,” she says hoarsely.

“Don’t be coy— why, why are you keeping quiet?” Magnus asks, cupping her face between her palms. “What aren’t you saying to me?”

She frowns. “...what’s going on?”

“Do you know me?” he presses. “Who am I? Lucretia, who was I before, who was I in the static the cup showed me?”

Lucretia scrambles back, pressing her back against her headboard. “...what is going on?”

He sits back on his heels and shrugs. “You have the answers. You _have_ to! I can’t even understand what… what I am. Because I know I-I was more than the kid I thought I was.”

“What? What are you t… what’s going on? Why are you asking me this, the static, what—”

“There’s a period of time I’m missing, Lucretia, and I think you know where it went. And I know you know where the Voidfish’s baby went, too. What did you feed it, Lucretia, who _am_ I?”

Lucretia gapes at him. He watches, like it’s happening in slow motion around him, as her mouth trembles and closes, as her eyes shine. The dignified woman falls away, and she seems so much less as her shoulders crumple in and she pulls her robes up to cover her chest.

He isn’t sure why she bothers: he’s seen all of her before, and now he’s seeing even more than that. What else has she been hiding from them— what else has she been hiding from _him_?

“I—I don’t,” she says, voice trembling.

“You do,” he snaps. “Whatever you’re about to say, ‘don’t’ is a lie.”

“I don’t understand,” she finishes, mouth shaking and twisting as she inhales sharply. “I don’t _understand_. The… god, that was you who set off the, you… _How_?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says, clenching his fists. “I might not understand what I’m seeing, but I know, I know it’s big, that you _know_. I know that I know the Red Robe, probably! I know that, that we’re connected, me and you and him—somehow—he wants us to trust him, and, you have, you took the baby and—”

“Candlenights,” Lucretia whispers, like it’s a prayer. “Oh _gods._ ”

He doesn’t know what she means. “Yes,” he prompts.

She shakes her head and he watches her shoulders start to shake. She’s undone, unmoored, and he did it. He feels like he’s floating above the scene, detached from himself and her. Part of him aches for making her cry; the other part is stern, frustrated with her abuse of her power and position.

She’s manipulated them all, and to what end? She probably used his infatuation with her to perpetuate whatever those ends are, strung him along to keep him under her thumb. And yet, there she is, silk robes slipping down her shoulders as she cups her hand over her mouth, sounding like she’s about to be sick all over herself.

“The lab,” she whispers hoarsely. “I, I’d been right to… god, since then, I… I should have never…I _trusted_ you.”

“You should have never done— you should have never, whatever it is you _did_ to me, you shouldn’t have done it!” he shouts, reaching out and grabbing her wrist. He tugs her forward, pinching her chin between his fingers. “What did you do, who _am_ I? Who am I to you, to all this! The cup, the cup—June had it, because it was given to her father, and there’s a statue in town, and it’s— it’s some… _someone_ …I can’t, I don’t—I want to understand! I know you do, you know what it means! And that Red Robe, I, I’m supposed to know who it is, aren’t I? Why else would they keep coming back?”

Lucretia jerks back from his touch, jaw clenched tight as her entire body trembles. Her face twists from horrified pain to something stern and dark, something he’d only ever seen hinted at on her stately face. He aches, that look makes him ache, a visceral reaction to hurting someone he loves, to making her cry, to causing her to look like she’s made of stone.

“Fool,” she whispers. “I was a _fool_. You… I didn’t, you’re _Magnus_ , I didn’t, you… how cruel. I didn’t know you’d become so…”

“I’m the same as I always was,” he says. And it’s true—this is how he is, this is how he’s always been.

“You, I… I, you said you _loved_ me,” she continues, voice tripping on a sharp inhale, the beginning of a sob.

It sounds like she’s begging, that one word her entire life and she’s on the guillotine. Like it’s all that keeps her going. The word breaks her further, reducing her to quick, wet gasps and a hand tight through her hair.

“You _said,_ and _I_ , I believed—I was such a damn fool.”

“ _You_?! And what about me?” Magnus snaps. “What about me, running around, doing your errands, when, when there’s—there’s _something_ going on here!”

“You led a lonely woman on,” she says softly. “For, for _what_? There’s nothing I can tell you.”

“That’s a lie,” Magnus retorts.

Lucretia’s mouth shakes again and for a second she drops her head. But then she raises her chin and hardens her mouth.

“What was a lie?” She challenges.

“I didn’t lead you on!”

“You didn’t come here to… You didn’t come here out of desire for my company tonight, did you?” she asks, tears silently rolling down her cheeks. “You came for something else, you came for answers.”

Magnus is quiet; he can’t answer the question without lying. He came under the pretense of their relationship, whatever that had been before, to drop her guard so he could question her.

She nods quietly, her point proven.

“You weren’t interested in _me_ at all,” she says softly, resignedly. “You got me, you got me, but I can’t give you what you want.”

His stomach twists. There are so many things he wants, and her skin against his palms is still one, but it’s superseded by the desire to _know_ , by his sense of justice, by the Voidfish’s plea.

“Go, Magnus. I… you’ve gotten all you can from me. Go, leave me alone, leave.”

“So you’re not going to tell me,” he says flatly. He swings his legs off of the bed, shoving his arms back into his shirt. “You know, but you won’t tell me.”

“Just… go,” she whispers. “Please. Magnus, I—I loved you, I… If that’s worth anything at all, leave.”

He looks at her, huddled against the pillows, arms wrapped miserably around herself, eyes shining as her jaw clenches against her tears.

“If you loved me, you wouldn’t be doing this,” he says flatly. “You would have been honest. From the get-go. If you love me, you… just tell me, Lucretia. Whatever it is, whoever I am, even if I was, if I was a bad guy, I can’t fix it until you tell me. Just be honest. I know you’re lying about things, if you just _tell_ me!”

“ _Go_.”

“Stop being so _stubborn_!” He shouts. “There’s more to this than whatever your plan is!”

Lucretia makes a quiet noise, her hands flying to her mouth to stifle it. Her body shakes with the effort of holding back the cries that falter in her throat. He watches as she curls tighter around herself, nails digging into the back of her neck.

It’s pitiful. She cries like the world has been torn from her, but what world is it, really, if it hasn’t been given to her freely?

He grunts in disgust, turns and leaves without another word.

* * *

He leaves and he doesn’t come back. She doesn’t realize she _expects_ him to, needs him to until the second night without him, sleepless and wanting in her office.

She’s alone all over again, with a bomb in her hands. Magnus could undo it all, he and Barry both could ruin her, so close to the Hunger coming.

(There’s no _could_ about it, she was ruined the second she let Magnus put his hands on her, she’s always been ruined, there’s never been any saving her.)

She knew there would be consequences for what she’d done; she thought she was ready, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t ready for this. She’d been a fool for wanting, for hoping, for thinking he wouldn’t figure out. She’d been a damn fool for letting Barry wander around, unchecked— for being soft, for thinking he wouldn’t sink to her level and use her family against her.

She just hadn’t thought she’d be facing them so _soon_.

There’d been no one to fool but herself, and she’d played herself like a fiddle. She knew time was up, she knew what she was doing, and she has no one to blame for her broken heart but herself.

She shuts herself up in her office, she trains them harder, pushes, shuts down, organizes the Bureau’s affairs, and before she knows it, she’s sending him to Wonderland.

She’s sending _them_ to _Wonderland_. Fear ices her veins and loosens her tongue.

She hadn’t _planned_ on showing her portrait to them, but their lackadaisical flippancy terrifies her. She wanted them to recognize the gravity of the situation—the situation she’s sending them to.

And Magnus. Magnus isn’t listening to her. He’s brushing her aside, all of him turned away from her even as she pleads for his attention, like her attention is focused solely on him.

He’s all she can focus on: Magnus talking over her, brushing off everything she laid out.

Magnus, being done with her. And Taako, clever Taako, his eyes darting between the two of them. Does he know? Surely, he does. He knew before they ever were, even. But what of them now?

What of them _then,_ and after?

Her office spins around her. She grips her thighs under the desk, then clasps her hands at her stomach, shaking. She sends Angus away as the others leave, granting him a twenty-minute leave before the entire thing goes inevitably to shit.

Wonderland.

She hadn’t lied about it; she still hears the voices, sees the lights, feels it in her bones. Parts of her have never left those blinding rooms.

Wonderland. Magnus.

She grips her hands tighter against her stomach, arms trembling as she locks her elbows, presses harder. She inhales and inhales, unable to let her body deflate until sparks dance in her vision.

Magnus. _Magnus._

There’s a chance, she hopes. That he’ll come back while the others are fiddling around doing whatever, that the whole thing was an excuse to come see her.

Hope, despite everything she’s gone through, springs eternal and soars high.

He was just tired, confused, that night, that… It’s Magnus, he couldn’t have lied about his feelings. It doesn’t matter how muddled they are from Fisher and Junior’s magic, Magnus’ earnest loyalty surely couldn’t have changed that much.

He said he’d forgive her, that he loved her. She couldn’t give him much that night out of shock, but if he… if he comes back…

She’s afraid that telling him too much would put him at risk in Wonderland, but she could partition off a part of the truth. Or she could just risk it all.

The storm is already beginning to gather. It’s only a few days until… Until the Hunger.

It wouldn’t… he could… He’d said, once in another life, that he’d help her.

(He had also said he would always support her, no matter what she chose, but still: alone in a room of seven, six mouths tearing her apart, six sets of eyes refusing to look at her.)

If he comes, if he comes back to her, she’ll do it. Anything for him to take Wonderland seriously. Anything to have his hand on her cheek, to have his support again.

Anything for her not to have been played a lovestruck fool.

The door to her office slams open, a red-faced guard bracing themselves in her door.

“Ma-madame, I’m so sorry,” he pants. “There’s been a security breach—”

“ _What_?”

“The isolation chambers, we… we have two guards missing, they won’t report back after security registered access.”

“Where are our Reclaimers?”

“Gone, gone already, ma’am, you’re not saying that…”

Lucretia waves her hand. “No,” she says faintly. “Just… making sure they were safe, of course.”

The guard says something else, and surely, she must answer, but everything dissolves into tiny bubbles of light.

He _kidnapped_ her employees. He talked to Robbie.

She doesn’t care. She’s numb to it, the fear of Wonderland and the grief of her broken heart soothing over each new betrayal.

How long has he known? How long has he had the pieces of the puzzle in his hands, but failed to recognize their meaning? Was it Refuge that did it, or has he known since Candlenights, when they spoke with Barry in Lucas’ lab?

He’s in Wonderland, and they can’t contact him.

He used her like she’d used him, and it was what was coming to her anyway, she knew it had to end. Her heart shakes and trembles and rattles. She prays, just once, to no god in particular— she can bear any hurt, any betrayal, but please, bring him home.

* * *

He feels a little bad about the boys, because truthfully? They’ve done nothing wrong. They just happened to be on guard duty in the wrong place, the wrong time. He distracts himself chatting up Rowan, trying to ignore the guilt bubbling up in his gut.

He doesn’t give a shit about killing bad guys, not really. It’s what he does. He fights things, kills them, gets paid. That’s just the way it is, since Raven’s Roost. But they weren’t _bad_. He doesn’t understand what Lucretia’s doing, but he’s not sure she’s bad, per se.

Morally murky. Clear as mud. Lonely, for sure. She’s bright as hell, though, and he’s not too sure he’d be able to see through her motives even if they were obvious.

He’s got a sinking feeling in his gut that it has to do with the Red Robes.The Red Robes and Lucretia, somehow, they must be tied together, more than just two opposing forces. She doesn’t want them talking to the Red Robe that keeps popping up, and that guy is just as crystal clear as _she_ is.

He keeps warning them, keeps talking about a hunger, about the thralls. Maybe he’s warning them about more than just the Relics, maybe Lucretia’s… She’s destroying the Relics, or… so she says. She’s doing _something_ with them, at least.

He’s halfway through the thought, mouth full of jerky, when Taako falls into step beside him. He shoots a significant look Rowan’s way, and the ranger picks his pace up to catch up with Sterling.

“So,” Taako offers with a sneer. “What a joke. We can’t even make it through a forest without having—”

“A competent woman,” Magnus finishes, spraying jerky as he snorts.

“Grossarooni,” Taako sighs. He laces his fingers behind his head and looks up at the canopy of trees above them. “So. Cassanova.”

Magnus swallows hard, jerky turning to gravel in his mouth. “Hey, don’t. Not now.”

“Nope! Right now. How fired are we?”

“We’re on a job right now,” Magnus says, voice low. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Taako raises a hand and loops his finger through the air. “My dude. You’re not a slab of meat; you have a brain that Taako knows you can use, y’dig?”

“So do you,” Magnus mutters, feeling his face grow warm.

Taako nods listlessly, obviously not listening. He turns his head away from Magnus, looking at the sprawling woods around them. He sighs and drops his hands, fingers tracing over the handle of the Umbrastaff at his hip. Over and over, Magnus watches as he taps an absent rhythm against its well-polished hilt.

“You go from railing her against her desk to railing her for info,” he says, nose scrunching up. His ears twitch, and he keeps his face forward. “How fired are we, my dude?”

“Don’t make this about you,” Magnus snaps. He feels bad about it instantly, rubbing his hand over his face. He knows that Taako’s… he doesn’t know a whole lot about Taako, not really, but he knows Taako worries about the stability of their positions as Reclaimers. He knows that it took Taako a few weeks of gingerly sliding his key into his door, testing the lock each time like he expected it to change underneath his touch.

“I mean,” he sighs. “You? Personally? Probably not fired. Merle either.”

“And you?”

“Maybe like, eighty percent fired?” he guesses.

Taako snorts. “What’d you fuck up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Magnus says, scowling at the back of Sterling’s head. He grips Railsplitter, clenching his jaw. “Less you two know, the better.”

Taako shrugs and twists a ring around his finger as they walk. He whistles, off tune, seemingly undisturbed by the awkwardness of their conversation.

Magnus breaks first. “How the hell did you know we were sleeping together?”

Taako laughs, so loud it startles the rest of the team. Magnus makes a face and shrugs up at Merle, who rolls his eyes and redirects Antonia’s attention. They walk on, Taako still sniggering helplessly.

“It was so obvious m’dude,” he wheezes. “And besides, after being tutored by yours truly, who wouldn’t want to nail you after you nailed those chocolate hazelnut crepes?”

Magnus feels his face warm as he looks over at Taako. Taako gives him a look that isn’t quite as prickly as the wizard probably wanted it to be, his flushed cheeks softening the deadpan displeasure on his face.

“Sorry I wasted your cooking lessons,” Magnus says.

“Wouldn’t say it’s a waste,” Taako mutters, and that’s the end of that conversation.

The rest of the hike to Wonderland is uneventful, almost enjoyable. His brief conversation with Taako lifted a slight weight off of his shoulders, one that he didn’t even realize he was carrying.

And then there’s Wonderland.

Wonderland is… Well, maybe he should have listened a little more to Lucretia back in her office. It’s a hell-pit of disaster.

Ten years, a pinky, whatever the fuck _vitality_ is, some… memory… that wasn’t Julia, thank Istus it wasn’t Julia, but it was _something_ important, because that’s how the game works.

And the Red Robe. The Red Robe, ghostly fingers on his palm tracing patterns he knows and understands, but can’t grasp the _meaning_ of. There’s no time to understand _why_ , just act.

And he acts. And acts. And acts.

He’s no closer to understanding the gaping pieces of himself, where the emptiness of what he’s given up overlaps with the static fuzz of what was taken from him.

It’s not until he dies that he starts to put the pieces together. That he starts to understand what’s been done to him, to, to—god, there must be _more_ of them, more than just him and the red robe looming in front of their party. He knows there’s more, in his dream there were more, who—who _were_ they? What have they been reduced to?

He doesn’t understand all of it, he can’t—there’s too much missing, but he feels it start to trickle inside of him. He should be shaking with anger, but it seems even his emotions are filled inside the wooden trappings of his current form.

So much is missing, so much time, and Lucretia…The static, her stealing away with the Voidfish’s baby, all of it, she’s behind it all, somehow.

There’s a picture here that he just can't see, a story that he can’t comprehend yet, but he knows that like his body was taken from him, his place in all of it was taken from him too.

There’s so much that he doesn’t remember, and that scares him. There’s something about the pitch black sky, the eerie silent storm, the people around him, there’s something about it that feels so familiar that it drives him wild.

His entire being is condensed down to this: his thoughts, his emotions, and a wooden body. All he can do is think, all he can do is remember, but it’s not fast enough. It’s not enough.

So much is missing that he despairs for it. He sits at their old camp, unsleeping, looking up through the trees as Merle snores away. The Red Robe sits across the fire, the flickering light doing his spectral form no favors.

Magnus would sigh if he thought it would do him any good (or, if he had any breath to do it with). Would jog if the movement did anything to soothe the restless energy within him; he could probably rest if he laid down and eased his thoughts, but for now, it’s too hard.

Rustling and a huff grabs his attention.

Taako sits up from his spot on the ground, scowling at him. “You gonna sleep at all?”

“Don’t think I can,” Magnus says with a shrug.

Taako sighs and stands, coming over to sit beside Magnus. “You’re keeping me up, I can hear you thinking. You’re gonna blow that new wooden head of yours,” he says. “Lay it on Taako, let’s see if we can stop you from fidgeting so I can get some damn rest.”

Magnus makes a disgruntled sound, like blowing a disembodied raspberry. He’s silent for a long moment, resting his wooden chin on his wooden hands.

It’s like the game all over again— trust or forsake? Which has _he_ been choosing? Which has the Director?

There’s nothing else left to lose, really.

“Do you think… if you were missing a huge chunk of your life,” Magnus says. “Do you think you would notice?”

The Red Robe flickers across the campsite, sightless bone turned straight towards them. He is silent, save for the quiet crack of energy around him.

Taako frowns, brows pulling tight. He fiddles with his bracer and then picks at the dirt underneath his nails. “Dunno, homie. Everybody feels like that,” he mutters. “Also, you’re a-a _literal_ dummy. Of fuckin’ course you’re missing shit. You just got scrambled.”

Magnus watches him, much in the same manner the Red Robe watches them—without eyes or emotion. There’s something there, just on the edge of understanding. Something about this moment, about trusting Taako with this, feels… It feels just on the edge of right.

“More than that,” he says. “More than just not having a body. Taako, I, there’s something _wrong_ with me.”

Taako reaches out and grabs his shoulder. “My dude. Wooden dummy. Course that feels wrong. It’s been real fuckin’ rough, and… like, so you broke up with the Director? Whatever. There’s more out there than some dignified shadow leader with a stick up her ass.”

Magnus laughs. “You think so, huh?”

“Trust me.”

Taako looks like he’s on the verge of saying something more when the Red Robe clears his throat.

“ _You two should sleep.”_

“Says the spooky skeleton,” Taako mutters. “Whatever, buddy, elves don’t sleep. Joke’s on you.”

The Red Robe remains silent, but Taako stands and dusts his hands off on his leggings, returning to his sleeping bag. Magnus stays in place, watching the Red Robe.

Taako starts to snore, but still Magnus sits. The Red Robe shifts, robe billowing with the moment.

_“I’ll keep watch, so sleep.”_

“I know you,” Magnus says quietly.

“ _Do you?”_ he asks. He’s not accusatory, simply curious. The skull within the robe tips like he’s leaning forward.

“I… I don’t know, but… why else would you be helping us?”

Though he has no throat to tighten, no physical body to shake his voice, his words crack and shake.

“I think I made one of these,” Magnus confesses, pointing to his bag where the bell rests. “Which means… I, I… fuck, it hurts.”

_“I know, bud. But you… you gotta sleep. Trust me.”_

He chooses trust—he should have before, when he first opened the scroll, when he put the few pieces he had together, when the chimera took out the transport orb with the guards in it. He trusted in Wonderland, and they’re all (mostly) in one piece when death seemed like the only option.

So he sleeps. He dreams. He wakes up with more pieces to a puzzle he doesn’t know the answer to, more hints to a riddle that he feels like he’s too slow to put together before the answer swallows him whole. There is so much that he doesn’t know.

He knows this:

He is not evil, and neither is _this_ Red Robe. The Relics themselves are not evil, just the deeds they were used for. He remembers June, he remembers Jack, he remembers how _good_ they were.

He remembers the weight of the cup as it leaves his hands, the weight sliding off of his body.

He remembers hope.

The Director is wrong, they were not evil. Not him, not _Barry goddamn Bluejeans,_ their mysterious specter who got his ass handed to him by gerblins, who tried to shield people in Phandalin. Who saved their goddamn bacon in Wonderland. Who lived and died alongside him, for whatever reason, who shared the uniform of something he doesn’t understand quite yet.

She is wrong, loneliness be damned.

He shows them the scroll.

* * *

Lucretia knows this: Magnus is dead, the Hunger is here, and she must enact her plan.

Magnus is _dead_. Her mind echoes and splits and shatters into pieces, but she can’t fall apart, she can’t fall apart.

He’s dead. He’s dead and Taako and Merle are dicking around, and he’s _dead_ and the storm is rolling in, and he’s dead. She killed him.

And then, the Hunger, and Magnus, and Taako pointing the Umbrastaff at her, and Magnus points his own sword too, because it would always come to this. She will never amount to more love than she gets, and she’s a _fool_ for thinking it could be different. She’s so numb to the pain of it that it’s barely a pinprick in the storm of it all.

And then there’s them, there’s Merle and Taako and Davenport and Barry and Lup, and _Lup_ , and Magnus, and Magnus’ arms around her and Taako’s hand outstretched, a shimmering shard of a promise in the fragile air, and there’s all of them, together, apart again, and it happens so fast that she can’t comprehend it.

And then… light.


	5. I Don't Want to Wait

She watches as they cheer, as Magnus—alive, whole, _alive_ —hoists Angus up on his shoulders. There are so many _people,_ so many clambering to see and touch and talk to their saviors.

Her grin slowly slides from her face as the tide turns around her, everyone surging from the edge of the battleground inward as the rest of the crew moves towards Neverwinter.

She stands, watching the slow crawl away from her. She curls her hands around her staff, feeling the smoothed wood crumble around her fists.

She looks at her hands in shock, white ash coating her fingers. Without the Light, her staff had been reduced to old white oak, burned by the force of her spell, crumbling under the weight of age and corrosive magic.

She’s seen it happen six times before, but it still startles her. She had never quite expected to see the destruction of the Bulwark Staff in person.

“ _Good riddance, huh?”_

Lucretia looks up into the swirling red light that is Lup. Magic dances, a shimmering illusion of Lup’s face.

“I, I suppose, yes,” Lucretia murmurs. “It seems a bit silly, but I _liked_ the woodwork on it.”

Lup laughs and nudges Lucretia’s shoulder with her own the best she can. “ _Maggie’ll make you another, Creesh_.”

“Ah.”

“ _Aaaah_?”

Lucretia watches the crowd as Angus climbs down from Magnus’s shoulders, running to meet Killian, who high-fives him heartily. Magnus sidles up to Taako, and she looks away.

Lup whistles loudly, which is all she needs to know.

“I… I need to go, go help people start to clean up,” Lucretia murmurs.

“ _What, and miss the bitching party that’s sure to go down?_ ”

Lucretia looks back over, to Magnus’s flushed face—as red as his hair—and Taako’s smug one. She _aches_.

Once upon a time, she’d be there with them. She’d have one arm looped with Magnus, Taako wedging between them and complaining when she and Magnus both would press kisses to his cheeks.

She’d never had a brother until Taako. She’d never known how intimate one could be with another person without it being sexual—she’d never _known_ until then, until she was pulled into the supernova of chaos that was his relationship with Magnus.

And all of it had come apart.

Taako had tossed her aside long before he threatened to kill her.

“We fought, you know,” Lucretia murmurs.

“ _What, you and Koko? Ah, Creesh, he was upset today_ ,” Lup says uneasily.

“No, before. All three of us, together,” Lucretia whispers. “I…he said he didn’t want to see me anymore. Shut me out, shut _Magnus_ out from me. I was tactless but, I… when you disappeared, I… I was sure you were dead.”

“ _I mean, you weren’t wrong,”_ Lup says softly, her face flickering briefly to the grinning skeleton underneath.

Lucretia shifts on her feet, only now noticing the ache in her soles, the way her back is tight. She remembers she hasn’t slept in three days. She sighs. The feral snarl on Taako’s face that afternoon was the same as when he’d slammed the door right in her face ten years ago.

She dusts the staff’s ashes off on her hips.

“I made it about me, I guess,” she murmurs. “No, not guess. I said, said we should stop looking at it as a rescue and more as a recovery and that, that… I asked why it was so… Why no one would admit the plan was wrong.”

“ _Again, you weren’t wrong,”_ Lup says. Her hand passes through Lucretia’s shoulder, and the magic makes her bones ache. “ _Stupid to say it to Koko, but not **wrong**_ **.** ”

Lucretia is silent. The crowds slowly fall quiet around them, still chattering, murmuring, but their focus shifting from celebration to damage control.

“Never mind me,” she says finally, throat tight. “Go on, I think Barry might have a heart attack and die if you’re away any longer.”

“ _Yeah but…_ _Are you okay, Lucretia?”_

Lucretia blinks, face suddenly hot. Tears prick at the back of her eyes, and she’s burning. “Of… of course,” she stammers. “We won, why wouldn’t I—? Of course.”

“ _You look a little…”_

Lup trails off, and Lucretia almost laughs. Lup, at a loss for words.

Of course she’s _okay_. She’s kept up _okay_ like it’s a Fantasy Olympic sport, she’s kept herself going for this long. She’s powered through the worst of it, waiting for it to get better… and she’ll be damned if it didn’t keep getting worse instead.

Ten years. Alone. Her family carefully portioned out and put away from harm, Lup lost, the Relics too much for her. Twenty years ripped away from her for nothing. Her new friends dead, each one taken away by the same powers her first ones were lost to.

Everything she had worked for, everything she had so cherished and kept close, all of it, worthless in the end.

She knows no one will ever acknowledge more than her betrayal in all of this; she knew it the second Taako talked over her in the strange blank space on the train.

She’d pled with Taako and Magnus both, when Lup had first gone missing, to just talk about the merits of her plan again with Barry, now they knew it had gone wrong.

She’d tried to save them all, and already…

Magnus might have rushed to forgive her, but his first instinct had been to side with Taako. Every time, his first instinct had been to side with Taako.

She’d tricked herself when he didn’t have his memories. She’d fooled herself into thinking she was someone worth wanting, worth trusting and loving and forgiving.

He’d made her feel so loved, so dear and precious, and then it crashed around her feet. He realized how she was, he’d remembered her betrayal—she’d been a fool to not redact their last meeting, and she’d been a fool for indulging his affections.

She’s tired and she’s lonely and she _hurts_.

But she’s okay. She always will be, really. She just had to remember her place in the status quo the hard way.

“I’m just tired, it’s. It’s been a long few days,” she says absently.

She might not have Magnus anymore—she might never have her relationship with Taako again, either—but she does have the Bureau. She built it: It’s hers, and no one can take that from her.

“You go celebrate,” she tells Lup. “I have some work to do. It looks like this all is in need of some direction.”

“ _You’re gonna work? Lame,”_ Lup complains. But she nudges Lucretia’s face with her own, grinning as she drifts back.

“Someone has to,” Lucretia murmurs, rolling up her sleeves.

“Might as well me be,” she says to no one in particular, once Lup is gone. She sighs and does the only thing she has left to do: she directs.

She tells people what to clean and where to scavenge parts from the glass balls; she routes people to the clerics that have set up triage stations. She wanders deeper and deeper into the fray, where the fighting was the worst, where the efforts to contain disaster mute the celebrations, where no one seems to recognize her other than a helpful wizard who still has spellslots to lift debris. She gives orders, she takes orders. She helps, directs, loses herself in the effort to be useful. 

Night falls. Fires flicker to life. Bards are already trying to recreate Johann’s song, already strumming new verses. She smells food, ale.

Mud and dirt and blood coat her hands, her robes. She longs for home, but her home was always the Starblaster and its crew.

It was always Magnus. Her heart always rest with him, even when he was away, even when he was with Taako, because a piece of her heart was with _him_ , too.

She’d done herself no favors trying to ignore that for all these years. But it’s too late, there’s no turning back from the destruction she’d wrought between them all. 

She has one last spellslot; she closes her eyes and uses it to go the next best place.

* * *

In the all the hubbub of their victory over the Hunger, Lucretia manages to slip away, completely unnoticed. The woman who orchestrated all the events that led to their final battle and ultimate victory slipped away, and there was no one who paid it any mind.

When Magnus finally notices, there’s no telling how long she’s been gone— no one can recall where she’d been since they’d stumbled back from the rift between dimensions.

The only person who’s talked to her is Lup, who can’t tell them where she went, just that she went to go help the cleanup team, who seems genuinely aghast to realize that Lucretia just hasn’t been seen since.

And that was a day ago.

It’s sad.

He knows there are people who would argue that the ignominy is what she deserves— Taako, for one. Davenport, too, and Barry, maybe. There is merit to the words— without her, they wouldn’t have had to fight. Without her, they would have had each other; they never would have lost the bonds of their family. That she spent over a decade shunning connections and friendships and that was what she chose.

But it’s _sad_. For her to have been able to walk away, alone, from the victory she worked so hard to even catch a _glimpse_ of; for none of the people she loved to have noticed her leave; for her to have to face the weight of it alone, again, after it all.

It’s sad. 

Taako, of course, doesn’t care that she’s not around. Over the past few hours, he’s alternately plastered himself to Kravitz, let Lup wrap spectral arms around his neck, and nudged Magnus’ elbow until he could wedge his between them, overflowing with delight at their victory.

In fact, it’s mentioning Lucretia that finally sours his mood, not the agonizing process of cleaning up through Neverwinter’s square.

“Listen, hombre, let her go off and sulk,” Taako says, scowling up at Magnus. He pats the concrete column he’s sitting on and Magnus is tempted to join him. The thrill of Taako looking up at him is old and new all at once, and it’s _so much_.

An entire relationship between them, and they never knew.

“I know you’re mad,” Magnus says softly. “But she’s been gone for a whole day, at least.”

Taako runs a hand through his hair, dislodging both debris and confetti. It’s a strange juxtaposition. “I’m mad as hell,” he says flatly.

He starts to count on his fingers. “First of all, she had the gall to, to make Lup’s disappearance all about her and her shitty plan. And then, when she didn’t get her way, she wiped all of our memories, except for _you,_ who she left herself clear as day in. She set me up with some shitty roadie she picked up off the side of the road, then left us all to stew in our own idiocy for _ten years_. And then, she rounds us all up,” he spits. “She rounds us all up and uses us like toys. Let you traipse around like a goddamn dog in heat, while I—”

His voice cracks and he huffs angrily. “I ran out of fingers, you get my point.”

“No one was stopping you from telling me you had a crush,” Magnus says gently.

Taako levels a look at Magnus that could have brought the Hunger to its knees.

Magnus laughs and holds his hands up. “Point taken.”

“Good,” Taako mutters. He scrubs the back of his hand against his chin, smearing it further with dirt and ash. He sighs and leans back onto his hands, looking at Magnus like he’s appraising him. “You’re not gonna… you’re not gonna listen to _any_ of what I just said, are you?”

Magnus tucks his hands into his pockets and looks up, towards the second moon. He sighs slowly.

“No,” he says softly. “Sorry, Taako.”

“Ain’t no skin off my teeth,” Taako mutters, kicking his heel back and spraying Magnus’ shin with gravel.

Magnus darts forward and catches him by the ankle, tugging gently. “Is it?”

“You barbarian!”

Magnus tugs again, and Taako kicks slightly, a grin starting to spread across his face.

“Tell me,” Magnus says, laughing as Taako flicks his wrist and reclines mid-air, level with where Magnus holds his ankle. “Taako.”

“Come back during business hours, home skillet.”

Taako tips his hat down over his face to prove his point, crossing his arms over his chest as he hovers.

Magnus gently squeezes Taako’s ankle. “We… we left her, too, Taako,” he says softly. “She was _desperate_.”

“Yeah? I don’t _care_ ,” Taako bites back. He sits up, using his full strength to yank himself from Magnus’ grasp, moving so they’re nose-to-nose.

“She was lonely.”

“Yeah, and _I_ was a _twin_ ,” he hisses. “She used you, and you’re just going to go right back?”

Magnus swallows hard, looking into Taako’s eyes; up close, he can see the red-rimming around his lashes, the scratches and bruises and the roughness of his cheeks against the spread of freckles on his cheeks. Once upon a time, he knew each one like the back of his hand.

Once upon a time, he knew Lucretia just as well— Taako, too, they’d been inseparable, the three of them, but now…

“Maybe she did,” Magnus concedes. “But, Taako, she used to… she loved you so, so much. She didn’t mean to hurt us.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation,” Taako says flatly. He jabs Magnus in the chest. “You are too soft, you forgive too easily, and it’s going to bite you in the ass one day, like when you got your heart shattered by ice queen up there in her throne room, and…”

He sighs and lowers himself to his feet, finger still digging against Magnus’ sternum. “You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t go, would you, you fucking sappy puppy-faced asshole,” he mutters.

Magnus grabs Taako’s hand and squeezes it tightly. “Thank you,” he says, grinning.

Taako’s cheeks flush as he splutters, “I am _insulting_ you!”

“But thank you, Taako. Thank you for, for being my best friend through this,” Magnus says, gripping Taako’s hand and pressing it to his lips. “I wouldn’t have gotten through it without your help. Thank you for loving me and listening to me be stupid.”

Taako’s ears flick back as his cheeks go from pink to bright red, splotchy and bright. He yanks back, mouth agape. “I—what the hell?” he croaks, voice splitting an octave.

Magnus grins against the back of Taako’s hand, stepping up into his space again. “What was it, who wouldn’t want to nail me after I nailed those crepes, huh? Real supportive.”

He grins, then jogs backwards a few paces. “I understand if you’re angry, but I need to go find her, Taako,” he says seriously.

Taako’s ears twitch against his neck as he struggles to string two words together. “I—fine! Go! Go live out your Fantasy Nicholas Sparks dreams, whatever!”

Magnus laughs and turns away, making it only a few steps before something smacks his ass. He turns, and Taako waves cheekily, a lavender mage hand mimicking the action.

And Magnus knows that they’ll be okay. Maybe not instantaneously, and maybe not tomorrow, but that there’s enough care and love still between them that they can make it okay.

Taako might never forgive Lucretia, but Taako forgives _him_ and that’s just how it has to be right now.

There is a thin line between the things he knew three days ago and the things he’d always known; the same applies to Taako. They both know that the Director, Lucretia, is not the same as their lover, their sister, their friend, Lucy, who was not the same as Lucretia, quiet and standoffish, after the Hanging Arcaneum, after the Relics.

And that’s where the knowledge stops for Taako. But Magnus, he knows a little about that woman beneath the heavy robes and carefully applied gravitas.

He’d seen how lonely Lucretia was as the Director, seen how starving she’d been for contact, for friendship.

She’d been so hesitant to take his offer of companionship. Back then, he thought it was because she was too brilliantly skilled for someone like him; later, because he thought she knew what he had been, and was wary. That somehow, Lucretia knew of his static-bound, slippery history; the Chalice and the statue, the scroll and the persistence of the Red Robe ( _Barry_!), and she was using his love to keep him close, to keep him on the path she wanted.

Of course, now he knows the true reasons for her hesitance: Because he was Magnus, and because she was Lucretia—ever cautious and still mourning what she’d done to them all. What she’d done to _them_ , together, as she carved out the piece of his heart that had been hers and fed it to Fisher.

But his feelings had lingered, long after that meal had digested and been a static fugue for years.

Bonds, once made, can never be broken. Even if the person is gone, there will still be that bond, no matter how thin or frayed it becomes.

Fisher’s power may have pulled the thread so tight that it frayed and bleached and led somewhere incomprehensible, but they were still there— how else, then, could they have felt the tug in their bones for _something more_? Merle’s wanderings, his revolution, Taako’s insecurities, all of them screamed for something they knew they had, but could not name.

Bonds are not so easily pulled apart.

Merle found Pan again, Taako found Lup, Barry found them all, and Magnus…

He knows instinctively, that he’ll find Lucretia on the moonbase.

There are glass balls scattered here and there, some of them broken, some of them already gutted for parts to cast spells and start rebuilding around the gates of Neverwinter. He finds one, slightly cracked and lets it autopilot itself back up to the second moon.

The base is large and winding and if he’d had to try to find Lucretia a week ago in the mess, he’d never find her. But he knows her now, knows her habits and her quirks, and so he finds her.

She’s in her quarters.

The main power for the base was decimated during the Hunger’s attack; the auxiliary spells cast orange flickering light throughout the hallways to the quad.

The topmost levels are trashed— he has to pick through rebar and plaster and wood, through the glass where the Hunger shattered through into the dais room, past the portrait of them where it hangs askew, and to the side, where she took him the night it went bad.

The door is open.

There’s no doubt when he opens it that he’ll find Lucretia.

She sits at the panoramic window where the glass wall meets the layer of glass floor, in her little outcropping of empty space, having drug her desk and chair aside.

She did this often in the Starblaster, curled up in the wide window of the navigation room, watching the stars drift pass.

“We missed you down there,” he says.

Lucretia doesn’t look up. “Right,” she says softly. “Sure.”

“ _I_ missed you down there,” he tries.

She doesn’t answer, instead watching the slow drift of the land below.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he offers. He picks over the detritus— even her room had been taken by the Hunger, clothes and books and papers and paint litter her floor— to lower himself next to her.

“Oh Magnus,” she sighs softly. “You shouldn’t be here. Go back to the, the parties and, and your family.”

“You earned that, down there, this isn’t what you earned,” he says. “The parties and the people and-and, all of what we get, you earned it too. And you _are_ family, Lucretia.”

Lucretia shakes her head once, an errant spiral curl trembling with the motion. “There’s nothing to gain from, from whatever… whatever you’re trying to do. This changes nothing about _me_ , and everything about _you_. You don’t… I am so sorry, Magnus,” she whispers. “I let you be a fool. I took you from everyone. I… I made all of you fools. I think it would be best if you just… forgot, or, or left what happened between us in the interim alone.”

Magnus sighs softly in the silence following. He tries to choose his next words carefully.

“I did the same thing I always did,” he says slowly. “And you, Lucretia I don’t blame you for being lonely. You tried your best to keep your distance. I hurt you.”

Lucretia raises one shoulder in a small shrug. There’s no arguing that he didn’t, it’s a fact. He hurt her. Then and now, he put wounds on her that hadn’t healed, that she hadn’t _allowed_ to heal.

“You were lonely,” he continues. She does not dispute it— she’d said as much herself. “I was too, and I felt it, Lucretia. I felt our bond, even though I couldn’t remember it, and… I don’t regret trying to be there for you. I loved you.”

Her silence tightens his gut; she says nothing, just nods her head slightly and tightens her jaw, eyes fixed on the world below.

“I want you to know I’m sorry I… when I was all mixed up, after Refuge, after, June gave me this scroll, and I could see myself in my uniform, but I couldn’t understand. It messed me up. I distrusted you; I knew you had answers. But I didn’t set out to, to get them from you by… by taking advantage of the trust between us, by pretending to have feelings for you. I just wanted you to know that.”

“I knew,” Lucretia says softly. “After, after it was over… I knew that, that there was no way you had an inkling before Refuge, I knew that… there would be… some consequences when you came into contact with the Chalice. I just… jumped to the worst conclusion. I’m not proud of my paranoia, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for them.”

“Time cup.”

“ _Chalice_ ,” she corrects with a dry laugh. She sighs and lays her head on her knees. “Oh, Magnus… I hurt you with my weakness, and I’m so sorry.”

Magnus feels the jolt of irritation in his gut like iron straight from the forge.

“I knew I wasn’t, I wasn’t thinking right, wasn’t feeling well. Everything was, I wasn’t clear on what was real and what was static. I heard your voice in the static; that scroll opened up so much in me, that I could remember the last time I saw you. Only I couldn’t remember _why_. Just that there was static, and there was you. I went to Fisher, and I was angry, and I shouldn’t have put my hands on you like that,” he says. “I shouldn’t have tried to be intimate with you, with _anyone_ when I was like that. I had you in a position of trust and I used that intimacy to lash out.”

“It’s fine,” she says softly. “I was only getting what I had coming. I’m just sorry it’s hurt you.”

“I hurt you!” he protests. “I— I, god, Lucretia, every time I came to see you, every time I, how much did it hurt _you_? I slept with you, told you I loved you and trusted you over and over, and then I went and pulled that shit and ran off? You were _crying_ , I made you cry, _again_ , and I stole your boys and broke into Fisher’s tank and, you had to clean up after all of that, and—”

“These are all consequences that I… well, I wasn’t prepared for you to kidnap my employees and leave them to a Chimera— that was an interesting distress call, I’ll have you know— but I… I should have prepared myself for these things. All of this is what I… I made my own bed, Magnus, and it was high time I slept in it.”

“You tried to tell me, you tried to discourage me, it’s not your fault—”

Lucretia shrugs. “I should have been stronger.”

“You were _lonely_ ,” he says again. “You missed us. I can hardly blame you for that.”

“There was never any need for me to be so lonely,” she whispers. “After all of it, my plan… it would have killed us all.”

“We needed that time, Luce,” he whispers. He watches her shoulders tremble. “We needed the bonds we made here, or else this would have just been one more plane we could leave behind. You allowed us to live and love and be a part of this place, and that’s what saved us.”

“I sacrificed all of mine,” she says quietly, “I sacrificed all of your love, all of your bonds with me, for you all to love other people. I am… untethered. I love everyone, but I… who will love me, now? My brother, my lover, you two would have taken me apart, without second thought. You already had before.”

She sighs slowly, breath shaking. “And Taako… I hurt you both when you needed each other. I needed the both of you, but you weren’t there. I needed you, Magnus,” she says, voice cracking.

She shudders as she hugs her knees tight to her chest. “Back then, I saw everyone falling apart, no one could handle what was happening. No one was exploring, no one was happy. Taako saw everyone as just… objects, dust on the side of the road, and Lup… Lup was gone, and no one was admitting that it _sucked_ and it was _terrible_ and that it wasn’t working, Taako was sick, Lup leaving made him _sick_. And I was alone, no one was talking to me, and I ran my mouth off and… the people I loved the most, taking me apart like that? I must have been falling apart too. You chose Taako, I chose…I chose to fix it so you could be happy. So I took everyone apart because I thought that was for the best. I didn’t think it would take so long, that it would ruin so many things.”

Magnus is quiet for a moment, his throat tight with sorrow; he watches as she curls her knees tighter to herself, arms tight around them as her back shakes. He reaches out and lays a hand on her back, feeling her rapid heartbeat through her robes.

How quick he had been to distrust her, to aid Taako in his anger, to undo what she had wrought. How quickly he had swayed from loving her to hating her. How quickly he had let her slip away all those years ago and not questioned her absence until it was too late.

He had been so angry with her then, after Taako had wept in his arms in frustration and sorrow. He’d never once entertained the idea that Lup was dead until Lucretia, and Magnus was furious with her for taking the one last piece of surety they’d had. He’d taken her apart at the seams, picked at her weaknesses until she fell apart just like Taako had, calling her every nasty, abhorrent thing he could think of, and laid it out in no uncertain terms who he’d chosen.

And then he’d left her. And that was that for them then.

His foundations had been shaken so many times in the past few days. His entire universe had been taken apart and reframed, expanded far past the limits of his comprehension. As they all had been reduced to their predominant features, she had too, and hers was her loneliness, the mantle she had worn for years and years.

And that, that had been _his_ fault.

He thinks of the things she’d said to him, while she was alone and he was a  version of himself that had never known her. Of her family, lost to what she had done, of the way she wanted to be with them, how tenderly she had touched him when she allowed herself that luxury.

“You wanted an after, Lucretia,” Magnus says softly. “You wanted me to listen. I’m listening now, so listen to me. I’m sorry I hurt you. I should have never said those things to you back then. I knew you didn’t want Lup to be dead, but that you were afraid. I shouldn’t have picked sides; you were clear that you were suffering, too, but I ignored it. I’m so sorry you thought you were alone, but it’s over. I’m so sorry you thought you had to give us all up to fix it. I’m sorry you couldn't bear to see us hurt like we were. But it’s over, now, Lucretia. You don’t _have_ to be alone.”

“I used you, I took advantage of you, I, I was awful to you,” Lucretia whispers. “How could you love me when _I_ don’t love me?”

“I do though,” Magnus says gently. “I love you.”

He slides close to her and hugs her to him, chin resting atop her head. “There’s bonds that can’t be severed, no matter what. Like how Taako found Lup again, how she persisted. It’s still there, even when the person is gone. I knew you when I didn’t know you, and I loved you then, like I still do now. That’s like, _triple_ love.”

She shudders in his arms with a sob. She unwinds and turns herself to his chest, fingers winding into his shirt.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

He kisses her forehead and pulls her into his lap. “It’s going to be okay,” he promises her, folding his arms around her as tightly as he can.

She sniffs hard. “How do you even know?”

“I’m real great at percepting,” he says with a grin.

Lucretia is quiet for a long moment, before quietly whispering: “Bullshit.”

Magnus laughs, squeezing her tighter until she gives a squeal of protest, laughter bubbling out between her sobs. “See? We’re just fine, it’s gonna be good.”

“Taako?”

“That’ll take work, but, Lucretia, the worst is over,” he promises. “We won, we can do anything.”

Lucretia lays her head gingerly against his shoulder, slowly winding her arms around his neck. “Sounds like horse shit,” she mutters, even as her body finally relaxes into his own, her breath slowing. “But I’ll take it.”

He feels her mouth curve into a small grin against his neck.

They’ll rebuild.


End file.
